Darin sits down with winemaker, designer, and storyteller André Hueston Mack to talk about his Five Rules for Building a Life You Don’t Want to Escape From. From walking away from the corporate grind to finding unexpected inspiration in reruns of Frasier, André shares how betting on himself, mastering his craft, and embracing contradiction have shaped his path. They talk wine, family dinners, legacy, and why telling your story—your way—matters. It's honest, funny, and packed with wisdom for anyone ready to take that first leap. Pour a glass of Maison Noir and press play.
Photo by Danielle Simone
A message from the Independent Hospitality Coalition for those being affected by ICE raids in Los Angeles:
Attention restaurant owners, be prepared. Thank you to everyone who has shared information that has allowed us to plan.
As if restaurant owners and hospitality workers did not have enough to worry about. Our kitchens are what they are because of are immigrant community. ICE is plucking people from our community in the name of law and order, we know the truth.
History will remember this moment.
Un mensaje de la Independent Hospitality Coalition para quienes están siendo afectados por las redadas de ICE en Los Ángeles:
Atención dueños de restaurantes: prepárense. Gracias a todos los que han compartido información que nos ha permitido organizarnos.
Como si los dueños de restaurantes y trabajadores de hospitalidad no tuvieran ya suficientes preocupaciones. Nuestras cocinas son lo que son gracias a nuestra comunidad inmigrante. ICE está arrancando a personas de nuestra comunidad en nombre de la ley y el orden —pero nosotros conocemos la verdad.
La historia recordará este momento.
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Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.
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I'm your host, Darin Bresnitz.
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Today,
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I'm joined by Andre Houston Mack,
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sommelier at large and winemaker whose Maison Noir wines are some of the best
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tasting and best designed wines to come out of America these days.
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He shares with us his five rules for building a life you don't want to escape from.
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We chat about his proverbial fork in the road when he chose to bet on himself.
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how being present at your own family table is just as important,
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if not more so than sitting in the boardroom and how tossed salad and scrambled
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eggs gave them the confidence to step into the wine world.
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Let's get into the rules.
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Andre, so great to see you.
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First chat of the summer officially.
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And I couldn't think of a better person to kick the season off with than you.
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Thanks for sitting down.
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Thanks for having me, man.
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I'm super excited.
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Yeah, definitely kind of first day of summer.
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I just shipped my family off to Vermont early this morning.
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So I have the house to myself and I'm feeling pretty proud and relaxed to have this
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conversation.
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It can seem like such a simple thing,
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getting your family off on summer vacation,
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creating this space for you to have this conversation.
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But I know that you've worked really hard to get to this point in your life.
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And not everyone has a clear delineation of that start of when their life that they
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wanted to begins to happen.
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But you do because you did what so many people dream about.
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You walked away from the corporate world.
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What was that moment like?
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What was the thing that pushed you over the edge?
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I just wasn't fulfilled at work.
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I was a licensed stock broker, but we didn't actually give any advice.
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This was before the smartphone.
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So all we really did was give stock quotes.
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And I came from a background of restaurants where you interacted with people all
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day long on a 12 hour shift.
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wasn't like that there.
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And I just realized that this is good, but it's not great.
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The moment really came where it was a fork in the road.
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Travelers Group bought Citibank.
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And at that moment,
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they said,
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hey,
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you're not losing your job,
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but you can reapply or you can take severance.
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And I had never heard of severance.
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I didn't know what that was.
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That was the moment where I realized that this is cool and fun,
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but I could probably work a little bit harder and make the same amount of money.
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But also, even if I made less money,
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It was just a thing of feeling in control and feeling fulfilled at the end of the day.
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I just felt like a drone in a way and couldn't really have my own personality,
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but it was that defining moment.
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And that's where I decided that I'm no longer going to do this.
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Not to jump ahead,
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but you are now a designer,
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sommelier,
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author,
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winemaker,
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but you had to start somewhere.
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When you left the corporate world,
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what was the first role you picked to lay the foundation of the life you wanted?
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I ran back to an industry that I had already been in.
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All throughout college, I had waited tables in restaurants.
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All those things that you just listed,
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never in a million years would I ever thought that that's what I was going to do.
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Even at that moment, at the fork in the road.
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And I had time to dream.
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I had time to think about the things that I wanted or to collect my ideas.
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At that time, I took the severance and decided.
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had basically more time than money, right?
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Because I knew that money was going to run out and was trying to think about what do you do now?
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That comes exhaustive and I would fall asleep on the sofa.
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And when I would wake back up, they would be paying back to back to back episodes of Frasier.
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And that was a little bit of an escape.
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They just started talking about wine.
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Wow.
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And I didn't know much about wine.
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Before I left to work in finance,
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I worked at Red Lobster all throughout college and they had three wines on the wine
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list and they were all white Zinfandel.
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Right.
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So I didn't know anything about wine,
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but I was curious and they seemed like they were having fun.
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And at this moment,
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I was at a pivotal moment in my life and I felt,
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well,
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if they're drinking wine and having fun,
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maybe that will make me happy.
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Maybe that will be fun for me.
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And by watching that show,
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it gave me the courage to walk into a wine shop for the first time in my life.
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Because from the outside looking in,
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if you don't see anybody that looks like you,
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you didn't think it was for you.
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I say this all the time.
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The greatest foil to pretension is humor.
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Somehow it felt like I could arm myself with a comedic antidotes, right?
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You know what I mean?
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And I got to talk to people.
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That initial thing of being afraid or being intimidated went away.
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It's amazing to hear you at the start,
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at this fork,
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that first step into the wine world and to see your success now.
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And it's even easier if you're sitting at home and seeing what you're up to on social media.
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I think it's a straight path,
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but we all know of those who've journeyed on that road that is far from straight,
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far from easy.
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Correct.
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Was there any point,
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especially in the early years,
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that you questioned your decision to build this life for yourself?
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Absolutely.
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I still do today.
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Sure.
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Yeah.
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Steve Jobs said, it always feels like a house of cards.
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And in some ways it should feel that way, that it could all go away.
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That's the driving force of why I work so hard.
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So maybe you can take a few steps away every now and then.
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It's really good to be able to build and retreat and look at what you put together
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and then make adjustments and
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And that's why I'm so excited to have you here today.
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Yes.
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So we can talk about your five rules for building a life you don't want to escape from.
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Absolutely.
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I want to go back to that very first moment.
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Not only does it take that right mindset to walk away from something familiar,
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you also need to have this other belief.
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What's your rule number one?
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Rule number one is bet on yourself, even when no one else will.
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Only you know what you're capable of.
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Only you know where you want to go.
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And you know, I always say eyes on the prize, even the days that you're frustrated.
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It's a saying so much that my wife adopted it.
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I watched too many movies when I was a young kid.
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I always thought that I'm going to work really hard and I'm working at Red Lobster.
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I'm putting the sauces on the plate and somebody in the dining room is going to see
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you through those double doors.
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how hard I'm working.
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And they're going to say, hey, kid, and offer me a job and change my life.
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And after a few years, I realized that wasn't going to happen.
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And the person that was going to come into my life and change my life was going to
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have to be me.
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That is where it all changed.
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You're the one that's in control.
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And sometimes you have to do a little juke move, right?
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Sometimes you have to do a spin move.
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You can't lose that faith that you have in yourself to make it happen for yourself.
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Allowing yourself that grace to step left,
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to step right,
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to give a little juke allows you to grow.
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And it also ties directly into rule number two.
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Which is make room for contradiction.
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It's like this idea of two things can be true at the same time.
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I can live with one foot in this world and another foot in this world.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And most people are like, what?
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No, I get it.
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I respect where I come from in the root.
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Being a product of hip hop, it's one of the few genres of music that's aspirational.
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And they tell you what to drink.
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They tell you what music to listen to.
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For me, it was, oh, I can still have that.
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When I first moved to New York City,
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I had worked at French Laundry,
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moved to New York City,
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and I was running the beverage department at Per Se.
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Every night before inventory, I would drink a 40 ounce.
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You can take your craft serious, but I just don't take myself serious.
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I like to have fun.
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If you're not having fun, then why even do it?
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You talk about craft.
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And I really think that understanding what you're getting into,
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what you're working on,
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having that strong foundation allows you to grow.
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What's your rule number three?
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Rule number three is master your craft and then break all the rules.
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And that was it for me.
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To forever be a master means to forever be a student.
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For me, it was just always, I needed to know all the rules in order to be able to break them.
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That's what I found my training was as a sommelier,
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working for the best restaurant in the world,
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the French Laundry,
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and then saying,
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hey,
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what's happening in New York?
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You know, it's one of the most anticipated restaurant openings in New York City history.
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I want to be a part of that.
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And I took that leap of faith and came here to do that.
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I wanted to learn everything about what I did and being a sommelier.
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So much so that I think I worked maybe 33,
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40 something days in a row when I first got to the French Laundry.
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I had this mentality of each day that I worked to be like three days.
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A lot of things come from experience.
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The more time that you're on the floor and the more time you get work,
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the more things happen,
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the more things,
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how you understand how to react.
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I felt like I was behind the...
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They ate ball because I started late.
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Think about this.
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When we're talking about from the time that I was watching episodes of Frasier to
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the time that I was the sommelier working the floor at the French Laundry,
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it's probably less than 24 months.
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Wow.
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So three wines on the wine list at Red Lobster that were all white Zinfandel, right?
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Yeah.
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So that time, less than 24 months, I was the sommelier at the French Laundry.
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By putting in that time,
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by grinding,
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by establishing your foundation,
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it builds up this protection around yourself where people can't tell you who you
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are or where you're allowed to be.
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It allows for you to do this, which is your rule number four.
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Rule number four is tell your story before someone else does.
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I learned that at the French Laundry.
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Great place to learn.
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Right.
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It was always this thing about controlling your own narrative because guests were going to ask.
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And if you didn't have the answers for the guests,
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then they were going to make up their own story.
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Of course.
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And that was it.
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I understood how to control the narrative and tell the stories the way that I
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wanted to tell them.
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And by owning my own narrative gave me power within that.
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And I didn't have to wait for others or the gatekeepers to let me in or to pass me
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the mic,
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so to speak.
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I got to tell my own story in the way that I felt that was authentic to me.
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And because of that, it was unapologetically me.
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I love that.
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This is not an act, just me, who I am.
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I just get up every single day and get to tell my journey.
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By people buying into their narrative,
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it's the reason why people follow things,
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the reason why people build community around it,
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because there's a story that they can relate to.
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When people buy into a narrative, into a story, they're buying into you.
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Correct.
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When people buy into you, they want to be around you, which relates to rule number five.
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Yeah, and rule number five is legacy is built at the table.
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It's who you invite to that table, who's around you is how you build legacy.
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For me, this is everything.
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This is why I do everything that I do is the body of work and how you impact at people.
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And now that I have a family, that has another meaning to it.
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Having dinner at the dinner table with your family.
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You know, I'm a father of four boys.
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My boys are 16, 14, 9, and 6.
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And having family dinner, I feel like that is also where we're building legacy.
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100%.
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Where we're talking about things and not just all about the lessons that I've
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learned in life,
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but breaking bread and talking to them about their lives,
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asking them what's happening there.
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The dining room table at your house is just as important as the boardroom table.
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Building that community with your own family is so important.
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Correct.
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Because sometimes what you do is you get lost in saying, I'm doing it for them.
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And the reason why I'm not at the dinner table is because I'm building this life for them.
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They deserve just as much as my time as anybody else.
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I love the life that you've built.
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If people want to follow along with your adventures,
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if people want to get your wines or sign up for notifications about your new book
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that's coming out,
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where can they go?
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Just hit me up on IG.
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That's kind of like my main line of communication at Andre H. Mack.
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My wine company is called Maison Noir Wines.
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You can check me out on YouTube.
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I'm happy to be able to share these things because I really feel a lot of people
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are out there living for the weekend.
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And the whole idea is that if you built every day and love what you do,
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every day is a weekend and every day is a blessing.
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It's living that good life with intent.
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Absolutely.
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Andre, thank you so much.
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Really appreciate you making the time, sharing your rules.
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Have a great summer.
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Anytime, man.
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Thank you.
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You too.
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Cheers.
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