Beautiful Flames: Tahiirah Habibi on Wine, Equity, and Defining Luxury on Her Terms
A trailblazer is defined as “one that blazes a trail to guide others.” It’s a definition often used to describe people in various fields who step outside of their comfort zones for a bigger purpose or mission.
It’s something that Tahiirah Habibi is often called — but for her, it’s never been about recognition or accolades. It’s always been about creating a worthwhile space for Black and Brown women in the wine industry to thrive where none previously existed.
It may look effortless. Habibi can assure you — it is not.
“No one talks about what it is to truly be a trailblazer. [And] you only see the flame. You don’t see what it takes to build the trail.”
Habibi, a North Philly native, has always had a love affair with two things: accessories, and luxury. She tells me as we chat, her beautifully unique mother of pearl statement earrings swinging as if to accentuate the point, that it was while she was in college that her love affair with luxury on her terms, and subsequently, with wine, began.
“Why is it that every time a Black person is going into something that’s high end or luxury…we immediately start editing ourselves?,” she notes that she often found herself questioning, even as she studied broadcast journalism in college. She goes on to add that her college experience, encountering how wine created both connection as well as power, made her want to learn more about it.
It was also around that time that she realized that she was entering rooms, seeing an $8 billion industry — but not seeing any other faces that looked like hers.
She set out to change that.
This is the trail that led her to The Hue Society.
Founded in 2017, and centering the amplification of Black, Brown, and Indigenous representation in the wine industry, Habibi’s Hue Society is a community she built for wine sommeliers, hospitality professionals, and enthusiasts of color. The community offers curated events that center wine knowledge and appreciation, as well as shares resources, educational opportunities, and safe spaces for their active members.
Habibi’s individual trail is just as impressive. Her accolades include being listed on Wine Enthusiast’s 2020 40 Under 40 list and being the first Black woman to grace the cover, as well as winning the magazine’s Wine Star Award for Social Visionary of the Year in 2022. Other awards and features that she’s achieved for her advocacy in the wine industry could easily be an entirely separate article in and of itself.
She is also on the Beverage Advisory Board of the James Beard Awards, the most prestigious award in the food and hospitality industry, highlighting its best and brightest. Prior to that, she sat on their board from 2021 to 2025. Even this particular foray speaks of Habibi’s dedication to advocacy and ensuring authentic representation — the awards themselves are no stranger to controversy surrounding ethical diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.
And yet — the awards, the accolades, the recognition — none of it is what drives her.
“I have this thing where I just be going and I don’t even think about it,” Habibi notes somewhat ruefully. “I’m being a lot more conscious about [celebrating and] making sure that I am actually even paying attention.” Part of it is that the work, the advocacy feels incomplete for her — and being present for the accolades and milestones themself, in a sense, takes away from the laser focus of ensuring that the representation exists and is accessible.
It’s a journey that requires a thick skin and support — not just financially, either.
The cost is expensive in more ways than one.
Habibi has seen a lot of shifts in her journey to who she is today. In 2011, having recently completed wine school at the time, she decided to relocate from her hometown of Philadelphia, to Miami – on a ‘whim and a prayer.’ As we talked, she opened up rather vulnerably about the imposter syndrome that came with the urge to relocate, first to Miami, and then to Atlanta in 2020.
“There were…these very big parts of me that didn’t feel like I was good enough, that didn’t feel like I belonged. [Because] there weren’t any Black people that I was in contact with in the wine industry…encouraging me, that I could look up to.”
It was this that propelled her to go for her advanced certification in wine.
It also lined up what was the experience that almost managed to break her spirit.
Applying for and pursuing the credentials to become a Master Sommelier, she recounts the moment when, during class, one of the master sommeliers directed her to call him “master.” While the practice in and of itself was part of the standard of the sommelier world — that standard in and of itself was the problem.
It wasn’t reflective of the weighted history of enslaved Black people that is attached to that very word.
Habibi recalls her shock that the sommelier, who was White, didn’t immediately register the racial ramifications of the act itself — they even insisted on it when she originally protested. “Everything that I was banking on literally shredded in those moments because there was still my grounding, right? My humanity that…just could not accept [that] this is what I got to go through,” she reflected. She did complete the training…but that jarring moment reshaped her approach for years to come.
“My power doesn’t come from proximity to these systems and upholding these systems. My power comes from being able to move and maneuver in spite of everything.”
It was this trial-by-fire that pushed her to keep going. She began a deep dive of research into building an accessible app for wine enthusiasts: had it been done before? By whom? What did funding something like this look like? “It’s expensive,” was her answer with a laugh. Building an app, she noted, requires extensive amounts of capital. In addition, she added, there’s an added barrier that stems from the tech field being similarly exclusive, centering the same types of people that Habibi notes prompted her to get into the wine space in the first place.
“You have to go through the fire a lot of times by yourself,” she reflects. “And all of those rejections…talking yourself out of giving up [it’s a lot].” She originally soft launched her Wineish™ app in 2024, quickly realizing that the cost to maintain it without significant backing and support was overwhelming at the time.
“It was too much,” she noted. “I wasn’t getting funding…And so I was just like, okay…I have to stop and take a step back and figure out how I can do this and be able to sustain it. The research has [even] shown it,” she adds, citing a fact that I myself learned a few years ago, in doing my own research: for every $100 that a white man in business receives, a Black woman only receives 34 cents of venture capital funding by comparison.
It’s a jarring statistic, particularly when you pair it with Black women also currently being at the center of an economic crisis, with over a half a million of them forced out of the workforce this past year alone, thanks to targeted federal workforce reductions & DEI rollbacks.
Today, Wineish™ is an interactive website-based app that allows the user to not only learn about new wines through cultural touchpoints such as heritage or emotional feel, but it empowers the user to pair their experience with an actual certification if they so choose. “Wineish™ taps into the…consideration of how we talk, not pretending that we’re tasting or smelling….because wine is about memories…about, you know, things you experienced.”
The beauty of the app, she continues, centers around using one’s own authentic lived language to find the right wine for you, as opposed to trying (and potentially failing) to use technical terms one is unfamiliar with.
She tells me that the app is part of a larger ecosystem that she is building out in real time, designed to bring her back to her luxury roots. Hosting luxury events for Black, Brown, and Indigenous people of color, where they can define luxury on their terms, is the next leg of the journey, followed by her own book, a pairing book with flavors from 20 elite Black chefs.
Habibi calls it her “high fashion museum grade book.”
She also talks of not just going back to her luxury roots, but to her media roots as well. Doing more interviews, creating a true “luxury” ecosystem that addresses gaps in real time is her long term goal. It’s a lofty goal, Habibi notes, but one that she is dedicated to — the continued advancement and amplification of Black and Brown people.
Habibi’s ethos centers firmly on this.
As we wrap up, the topic of selling her wine app comes up, an idea that she soundly rejects, noting that while many build businesses with the intention of selling, that is far from her goal.
“I have the luxury and the privilege of having a certain amount of freedom, I want everybody to feel like that. [And I know] the only way to do that is through equity and community — opening pathways…getting you to rethink what luxury is.”
To try Tahiirah Habibi’s Wineish™ app out for yourself, check it out here. (https://studio.com/apps/tahiirah/wineish) You can also learn more about her initiatives, as well as about The Hue Society, on her website.
Comments