Zach Bingham writes I am the Wine Director and Director of Education for Old Vines Restaurant Group, directly overseeing our two restaurants in Naples, Florida, in wine programming and staff education. I have spent almost my entire career in the restaurant business, starting at the age of fifteen working as a bus-boy and bar-back, and working every position upwards to General Management. I have also worked in the off-premise, wholesale, and import sides of the wine and spirits industry. It is my life goal to educate, inspire, and mold the current and future generations of our Industry, to establish a firm foundation of career-orientation and a healthier balance of work and life within our community. I hold a WSET Level 2 certification in both Wine and Spirits, and I am in pursuit of Level 3 in Wine, with the ultimate target of achieving MW certification.
Glass Houses
When I was twenty-two years old, I accepted my first general management position within the restaurant industry. It was a roughly three hundred-seat restaurant in the Harborwalk Village resort district of the fishing village turned vacation destination town of Destin, in the Florida Panhandle. We had taken over a building which was, in its first life circa 1980s, a Hooters; a series of seafood fry joints followed in its wake, and our concept built on that charming history, while simultaneously introducing elevated foundations such as sushi, sea-to-table cuisine, craft cocktails, and an elevated wine program. I had spent the last two years working at a wine bar in nearby Seaside, where I still fondly recall my first “lightbulb” wine moment: a glass of Hahn Pinot Noir from the Santa Lucia Highlands. My passion for wine was ferociously co-fermenting along with an insatiable desire for new leadership experience and a perilous, precocious amount of naïveté about what a career in the restaurant industry looked like. That moment with the glass of Hahn “SLH” Pinot Noir was enough to open the kaleidoscope, and I was smitten by the new world of food and wine now open to me — but my vision was blurred by the excitement of new horizons. And so, less than two years later, I found myself once again in search of a new challenge.
In Chicago, I experienced the first of many interwoven industry connections, as one of my Florida colleagues had a friend who needed a general manager to fill in at a sushi bar on the Six Corners in Wicker Park. I jumped in, head-first, and immersed myself in the saturated scene of Chicago restaurants, leaning on my seasoned staff to learn the neighborhoods and expand my network, while also finessing my wine and cocktail knowledge far beyond what I had even expected. I was quite good at this game of restaurants, and I was hooked on the constant stimulus that came with the territory. When my management contract expired, I found an opportunity to join the team at Salero, a Basque-inspired restaurant laden with seasoned veterans of both restaurant industry and Chicago ethos alike. I relished the chance to step away from managerial duties and once again focus on guest experiences as a Service Captain. It was here that I learned just how much a restaurant could truly feel like a family. It was here that I was first exposed to the world of aged wine, entertaining guests and hosting wine dinners that offered myriad exposures to vintages twice my age and regions beyond my then-limited knowledge. My love affair with wine deepened immensely, and it was here that I first saw a path forward in this industry as a career, rather than a collection of jobs in transience.
On November 1st, 2023, as I was leaving a wine dinner, I was pulled over for a DUI. In my intoxicated state, I had treated a red light like a stop sign, and simply turned left right on through it. And despite the self deprecation, languishing in “what if” scenarios both corrective and disastrous, and the overall ramifications of what comes after being charged with a DUI, I have been struck by a singular, sobering realization: it never should have happened in the first place.
I have spent my entire adult life in the wine and food business. Much of that time, my job has been to take care of others — namely, my employees — and to know precisely how to monetize alcohol consumption in with some modicum of responsibility. Alcohol safety courses have been mandated, rideshare companies have been established, collective self-regulation has been encouraged, if not championed. But the ugly truth is that, when it comes to alcohol consumption within the Industry — and I say industry with a capital “I” to include restaurants, bars, hotels, import, distribution, and every aspect of alcohol as a business from production to consumption — we simply don’t take enough responsibility for ourselves. We have normalized casual intoxication. We have celebrated the ability to show up to work hungover (and/or still drunk) and still “get the job done.” We take the 10am appointments and continue through the post-work day cocktail hour. We rely on liberal sample budgets to supplement daily exercises of just how much one’s liver can actually take. Shift drinks and menu workshops, team meetings and corporate conferences, a dose of liquid courage and a stress combatant to boot — as I have thought about all the ways that alcohol had become interwoven into the DNA of who I am and how I go about my days, I was nothing short of ashamed. This was unacceptable. But it was also unavoidable … wasn’t it?
Wrong.
In the months since, I have embraced sobriety with gusto. I oversee the wine programming for two restaurants, as I did before. I still take tasting appointments and host wine dinners; I simply don’t partake. I have had to adjust very little about how I actually do my job, and in truth, much for the better. And while my story is very much my own — and let me be very clear, here, that I fully accept my decision to operate a vehicle under the influence rests solely on me — there is a general and alarming sympathy I find in conversations with my colleagues: this could have happened to any of them, too. It’s 2024. Our industry is changing faster and in more drastic ways than much of recent history, and yet we are not addressing the biggest threat to the future of this business that we love and the community it creates. Our glass house has blinded us; when we step outside, we can see with true clarity just how damaging our relationship with alcohol has become. Accountability and education are two of our most powerful resources, and we don’t use them nearly enough. If we did — if we start to — there’s no telling how many lives will be changed.
I know mine has been.
Image by Constantine Johnny via Getty Images.
