photo via Food & Wine

He’s been called a celebrated sommelier, a change agent, credited with making wine feel accessible. He’s probably the only winemaker of color most people can name who isn’t a celebrity or a ballplayer.

But what makes him tick?

Being on my own wine journey, I wanted to know what’s at the core of André H. Mack. So I took a deep dive—profiles, podcasts, social media—and started collecting the quiet anecdotes. The cringe moments. The ones that change the game. I’d like to think I caught a glimpse of the man under the veil, and what motivates him to poke at institutions he was trained to uphold.

It’s the early 2000s. Mack has a finance job at Citicorp. Boring. The job offers stability but no authorship. The structure is rigid, the work abstract, success disconnected. So he leaves, takes a massive pay cut, and starts over—as a waiter. A waiter at The French Laundry, Thomas Keller’s temple of precision.

He moves into wine.

By 2004, Mack is in New York City as Head Sommelier of Keller’s new East Coast house, Per Se. From the service side, I’ll say this plainly: Mack found what finance lacked—craft, culture, and voice. But he was still operating inside rigid systems. These dining rooms are among the most controlled in the country.

Are you watching The Bear on FX? What Mack learned is what we all chase on the floor: taste, service, and perfection locking together to produce excellence on command. Somewhere in there, he wins Best Young Sommelier in America—the first Black sommelier to do so.

Institutions like Per Se are run like squadrons—precise, anonymous. Faces blur. Sommeliers are trained never to say their name. Phantoms moving in formation, circling a table in unison to present the next course.

But chicken?

That just ain’t right.

Mack didn’t accept it. He pushed back and reframed it himself. He went with Black Sheep. It stuck.

And why not? I’ll be the rebel, the rule-breaker, the outsider allowed in—reveling in it, unbothered. And let’s be honest: when it comes to lasting impressions, who are you going to remember—the black sheep, or the beige on the walls?

Who knew this would become part of Mack’s origin story. Do you see it yet? Keep reading.

While it looks glamorous, service is built on a lot of grunt work—inventory nights counting every bottle in the cellar, weighing spirits to track pours, calculating what’s overselling and what’s gathering dust. Before inventory at Per Se, Mack had a ritual: he’d drink a 40 oz. Not to dull anything—but to remind himself who he was. A pressure valve. A way to stay intact inside a room that demanded restraint at all times.

Then came the moment that finally broke the spell.

At Per Se, they carried an obscure sparkling water. When stock ran low, Mack would run to Whole Foods to fix it. One day in 2006, he was at the airport, headed out on a long-overdue vacation, when the call came in—about the water.

That was it.

Not because it was water, but because it symbolized a life where you are always on call for someone else’s needs over your own.

Shortly after, Mack made his exit. It was 2007. Apple released the first iPhone. Nancy Pelosi became the first female Speaker of the House. Britney Spears dropped Blackout. A year for breaking ground and shaking up establishments.

Mack has been unusually direct about wine’s social codes. He’s described the industry as a system built on insider knowledge—you have to know to know—if you want a seat at the table. Wine speak often has less to do with taste than with confidence, inherited or intensely studied. But isn’t wine supposed to bring people together? Aren’t these rituals meant to include?

His response became his philosophy: don’t simplify the wine—dismantle the hierarchy around it.

So how does he do it?

Mack quietly sets up camp in Oregon’s Willamette Valley—then an up-and-coming region sharing the same latitude as Bordeaux. Same math. Different energy. A dare to compare—not just for him, but for Oregon itself.

He creates new social codes. O.P.P.. In Sheep’s Clothing. Knock on Wood. Pop culture, music, fairy tales. Black ink on white labels. No foreign language required. These aren’t barriers—they’re cues. Inside jokes. Context.

He redefines what you have to know to know. And you know who knows? The audience the wine world has long excluded.

And he ruffled some feathers.

Remember the nickname that stuck? He decided to own it—loud enough to carry across the pond. He launched his brand not as Black Sheep, but as Mouton Noir. His name. His experience. Rendered in the language of the Old World, for the Old World to see. And they did.

While the records are sealed, we do know Mouton Noir triggered an eight-year trademark battle—brought by the centuries-old French house Château Mouton Rothschild, a legacy estate elevated within Bordeaux’s hierarchy under Napoleon III and fortified by its own mythology. A brand built on scarcity, whose bottles routinely sell in the four figures and have reached over $300,000 at auction.

The lesson wasn’t subtle: prestige protects its borders. Mack didn’t argue the point. He adjusted the name, kept the posture, and moved on.

What’s undeniable is this: nearly two decades in, Mack’s wines are still here. Still relevant. Still legible. In an industry where most labels disappear quietly, Maison Noir has endured—distributed nationally, stocked by serious retailers, poured in rooms that don’t need a gimmick to sell it. That kind of longevity isn’t branding. It’s trust.

More than that, his philosophy has proven portable. You see it in how people talk about wine now—less hushed, less deferential, more human. The hierarchy didn’t collapse, but it cracked. Enough to let new voices through.

Here at Pompette, In Sheep’s Clothing Cabernet has long been a best seller. We’ve just expanded the lineup with In Sheep’s Clothing Pinot Grigio and Bastardo Jackson, bringing more of Mack’s playbook onto the shelf. .

At Musette, the list includes In Sheep’s Clothing Cabernet, Free Gamay, and the newly added In Sheep’s Clothing Pinot Grigio. Different spaces. Same through-line. Wines that meet you where you are.

As for what’s next—Mack has already moved beyond the narrow definition of “winemaker.” Media. Design. Education. Cultural translation. The range keeps widening, and the posture stays the same. But that’s his story to tell.