Meet SARAH
Short Version
Professional sommelier and wine educator Sarah Looper has worked in the food and wine world for over twenty-five years. She is a graduate of the Wine & Spirits Education Trust (WSET) Diploma program, an expert-level qualification covering all aspects of wine; a Certified Wine Educator through the Society of Wine Educators; and she is a candidate for the Master Sommelier Diploma, the highest distinction a professional can attain in fine wine and beverage service, with the Court of Master Sommeliers.
Sarah has worked in several areas of the wine industry including journalism, retail, import and distribution, winery and cellar work, wine education, and she was a wine director in restaurants for many years running innovative wine and cocktail programs where she worked closely with the chefs and pastry chefs on food and wine pairings that would blow her customers’ minds .
Sarah is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder with a B.A in European History and she holds a Baking & Pastry Certificate from The Culinary Institute of America.
Grab a Glass of Wine Version
Sarah grew up on Long Island in a raucous household with five siblings. It was a challenge for her mother to cook for so many while juggling a full-time job — she was able to master an uninspired rotation of half a dozen efficient yet cheerless meals— but her mother’s severe nut and legume allergy prevented many foods and cuisines from being made at home. Sarah’s mom took a creative approach, turning ennui to incentive: all kids learned to cook at an early age, taking turns feeding the family. Sarah’s older sister, Rachel, was gifted a copy of the cookbook The Joy of Cooking and eight-year old Sarah hung around the kitchen whenever Rachel cooked from it. Rachel once made Béchamel, let Sarah taste it and sparks flew. Sarah fell instantly and madly in love with its creamy texture and deep allium, savory and clove-spiked flavor. On Sarah’s nights to cook for the family Béchamel often made an appearance which she poured over anything — broccoli and spaghetti were favorites. Family lore has it that sometimes she taste-tested it so much during the cooking process that there was none left for dinner (sorry – not sorry!).
At age eleven, Sarah was exposed to the slick and sultry tomato sauces simmering in the pots of a friend’s southern Italian mama whose traditional cooking expanded Sarah’s palate at after-school play dates. At the same age she started having sleepovers at another friend’s house whose parents were Filipina and Chinese, and it was there that her food world exploded. All the soy and peanut dishes that were taboo at home she slurped up happily. She devoured the salty, umami, and deep, rich flavors of both cultures’ dishes. When her own family dined out, her craving to taste *everything* became an annoyance to her siblings as she would routinely fork something off their plates “just to try” what they had ordered. She became a flavor craver and started paying close attention to the aromas, temperatures and textures of food in the mouth. The kitchen increasingly became her playground and her knack for seasoning led her to restaurant work.
Sarah’s first food service job was at the boarding school she attended where she would serve breakfast to her classmates and teachers, cafeteria-style, in exchange for money in her escrow account. She was always careful to keep the eggs warm but not dried out, the oatmeal spoonable and satiny. Because she arrived in the kitchen before any other student, she’d have breakfast herself and try variations and flavor mixes which she’d then recommend to fellow students when it was their turn in her line. “Try the oatmeal and thin it out with some cold milk, then mash up some Wheaties as a topping — they add a nice crunch but don’t get soggy. And hit it with some cinnamon and salt. See you in French.”
During and after college Sarah worked in restaurants, each subsequent one taking diner experience and food preparation and presentation with increasingly nuanced attention and seriousness. After graduating from University of Colorado at Boulder with a B.A. in European History she moved back to New York, but she did not settle for just any restaurant job. Sarah sought out serving positions at some of New York’s finest dining establishments, including Oceana, Gotham Bar & Grill, and Union Square Café. It wasn’t until her job at Union Square Café that she started to “get” wine. Wine education was a critical unit of every pre-shift meeting with tastings led by then-wine director, Karen King. Karen was the first woman Sarah encountered with broad wine knowledge and who made it a priority to share it with her staff. Karen would give the team short wine quizzes and frequently blinded them on wines, and it was here that Sarah was able to blind taste her first wine: a Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc.
In 2005, Sarah enrolled in The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone’s Baking & Pastry Program in the Napa Valley. Because she had worked in a handful of New York’s fine dining establishments she thought she knew a lot about wine (she didn’t). At The CIA she badgered the wine director, Traci Dutton, to bring her on in some capacity because she wanted more exposure to wine. Traci gave Sarah her first shot: a position as morning Wine Steward before Baking & Pastry class, 5 days a week. Sarah was given two cellars to keep clean, organized, and inventoried — one cellar of 30,000 bottles housing a mix of international and everyday domestic wines and the other 5,000 bottles of collectible California wines. Faced with these tasks, Sarah realized she knew absolutely nothing about wine. To change that, Sarah asked Traci to send her home with bottles to taste and in return Sarah would have to provide tasting notes for Traci. They would discuss the wine, its flavors, structure and region, and how the wine she tasted one week differed from previously tasted wines. Even though these review sessions were only a few minutes, Sarah felt the stakes were high. This intense immersion quickly ramped up her vocabulary, and it was Traci and her full-time cellar hand, Denise, who taught Sarah how to speak with expanded confidence and nuance to develop an ever more discerning palate. At the end of every session Traci would drive home the most important question, “Was the wine delicious?” That ultimate question served to remind Sarah that even though a wine might carry accolades, be made by a well-known winemaker or come from a laureled terroir, what makes a wine great is how the drinker likes it. Sarah was hooked.
After finishing the Baking & Pastry Program Sarah stayed on the wine team at The CIA, sitting for and passing the Level 1 exam with the Court of Master Sommeliers.
Sarah returned to New York in late 2006 and has since worked in wine retail, as a sommelier, a wine director, in wine journalism, import and distribution, at a winery, and in education. She began teaching wine to the public in 2009 after she had earned her WSET 3 and Level 2 from the Court of Master Sommeliers. In 2011 she went on her first wine trip to the Barolo region in Piemonte, Italy and again fell instantly and madly in love — this time with a region and its wine, food, culture, and people. She joined the roster of wine instructors at Murray’s Cheese in 2014 where for nine years she led in-person wine and cheese pairings. In 2017 she began teaching in-person wine classes at Astor Center, a wine and spirits education hub which provides classes on libations from around the world. It was at Astor Center where she debuted her now sought-after wine class for beginners, Vino Vocab. She earned her Advanced Sommelier from the Court of Master Sommeliers in 2016, sat for the Master Sommelier exam for the first time in 2019, and earned her WSET Diploma in 2022.
Currently, Sarah works as a sommelier at il Buco in New York City and can be found teaching on various social media platforms as @loopersomm, the #sommforeveryone. She brings her down-to-earth, approachable and humorous style to help people unravel the mystique of wine, and makes wine education accessible to people all over the globe.