On Sept. 10, Wine & Spirits magazine posted an image of its October cover on Instagram. Behind the bold type — “BEST NEW SOMMS” — was the smiling face of Anthony Cailan, a sommelier named by his peers as a future leader of the $300 billion global wine business.
Mr. Cailan’s coronation was unsurprising to many in the industry. Outgoing, charming and an expert networker, at 29 he is already a celebrity in the small world of high-end wine. He had worked at influential Los Angeles restaurants like Bestia, Animal and Eggslut, where his brother, Alvin, is the chef. Last year, the two were recruited to open a New York restaurant, the Usual, where Anthony’s wine list received glowing media attention and helped him get nominated for the award.
For some, however, that accolade was the last straw. In the weeks after the post, four women in Mr. Cailan’s professional circle contacted The New York Times to allege that he had either sexually assaulted them or tried to do so — allegations Mr. Cailan has denied.
Raquel Makler, 22, told The Times that Mr. Cailan — who hired and mentored her as a manager at a Los Angeles wine bar, then invited her to move to New York to work for him at the Usual — asked her last year to come to his Manhattan apartment late at night to keep him company while he sobered up. There, she said, he forcibly kissed and touched her, pulled off her clothes and repeatedly tried to penetrate her while she was frozen with panic.
Sarah Fernandez, 29, was working as a sales representative for a wine company in June when Mr. Cailan sent her a late-night text offering to taste the wines she was selling. They ended up at his apartment, she said, where he became sexually aggressive, pressing her against the sofa with his body, pushing his hands up her skirt and ignoring her objections, until she had to shove him off in order to leave.
“I want to be clear: I am a grown woman who was consenting to make out with him, consenting to go to his apartment, consenting to sit with his arm around me,” Ms. Fernandez said. But, she said, she strongly resisted what happened next. “He kept putting his hands on my thighs, he kept trying to get into my underwear. He would not take no for an answer.”
The two other women talked to The Times on the condition of anonymity, saying they believed their careers would suffer if they spoke out against Mr. Cailan. Both described incidents similar to the one Ms. Fernandez described: the late-night meet-up, the invitation to his apartment and then the sexual aggression.
Contacted for comment for this article, Mr. Cailan said in an email on Tuesday that on the advice of legal counsel, he would make only a single statement: “The truth is, these allegations against me are false. I look forward to the opportunity to clear my name.”
Over the last two years, the #MeToo movement has prompted allegations of sexual assault and harassment against numerous chefs and restaurateurs. But few public complaints have been lodged in the wine business, another male-dominated field where many women say workplaces are dogged by a toxic combination of “bro” culture, free-flowing alcohol and sexual aggression.
Both Ms. Makler and Ms. Fernandez said they believed that rejecting Mr. Cailan’s sexual advances could ruin their careers. Each told a co-worker about the incident soon afterward, as corroborated by The Times.
When Ms. Makler’s experience was relayed to people in Los Angeles who knew Mr. Cailan, some of them saw it as part of a troubling pattern that had begun years before. In January, five of his former co-workers, including his former employer Jill Bernheimer, the owner of the influential wine retailer Domaine LA, sent him an email asking him to stay away from their workplaces. Without providing names or details, they said they had heard accounts of his treatment of women that made them “deeply uncomfortable.”
Mr. Cailan responded in an email, asking them to specify any allegations. “I’m sorry for whatever story you’ve heard,” he wrote, “but I really do not know what you are talking about.”
In every region of the world and at every level, the wine business remains overwhelmingly dominated by men. Women have made some inroads in the last two decades, especially in the niche market of natural wines, where Ms. Makler, Ms. Fernandez and Mr. Cailan all work. But even there, women say they are far from being considered equals.
Interviews with more than 30 women in the industry suggest that sexual harassment is routine and sexual assault is pervasive. Many said they had been assaulted on the job by men they reported to or had professional relationships with.
Women say they are especially vulnerable when starting out, in jobs where they are constantly drinking among strangers: pouring wine at tastings, pitching wines to restaurant managers and running tasks for a sommelier.
“Women are touched everywhere we go,” said Marissa A. Ross, wine editor for Bon Appétit. “I have been groped, kissed and had total strangers stick their hands into my shirt in a crowded room.”
Ms. Ross posted on Instagram the day that the Wine & Spirits cover appeared, not naming Mr. Cailan, but saying she had heard that a prominent sommelier had “assaulted multiple women,” and offering help to victims of harassment in the wine industry. She referred some women who responded to The Times.
Mr. Cailan was born and raised in Los Angeles, and his brother’s success as a chef gave him a foothold in the restaurant business. After Domaine LA, he moved on to restaurant jobs and quickly became a quotable expert. He was the wine director at Hayden in Culver City, Calif., then a cutting-edge wine bar, when Ms. Makler started working for him in December 2017.
“I thought Anthony was a huge hotshot, with a lot of power,” she recalled. “And I thought we were close friends.”
When he decided to move to New York, Ms. Makler said he offered her a job. She visited the city in June 2018, to find an apartment in anticipation of an August move.
Mr. Cailan texted her in the early hours of June 24, she said, asking her to keep him company because he was too intoxicated to sleep. Believing that they were friends and colleagues in a mutually respectful relationship, she went.
At his apartment, she said, Mr. Cailan repeatedly tried to give her wine and cocaine, then started kissing her and asking for sex. When she refused and reminded him that he was her boss, she said he told her, “We can just forget about that” and “The restaurant isn’t open yet.”
As she continued to say no, Ms. Makler said, he became physically aggressive, forcing kisses on her and pushing his penis into her mouth. She said she was frozen by the knowledge that her career and future were in his hands, and so shocked by his assault that she didn’t physically resist as he pulled off her clothes.
Over the next hour, she said, Mr. Cailan repeatedly tried to have intercourse with her, but was too intoxicated; when he roughly pushed his fingers inside her, she feigned pleasure, hoping the encounter would end. Eventually he fell asleep, and she remained still until daylight, afraid to wake him. When she slipped out, she said, he mumbled, “See you at work.”
Ms. Makler began looking for a new job in New York. She said she heard nothing from Mr. Cailan until September. “Yo! Are you officially in NYC?” he texted. She responded, reminded him of the details of the encounter and wrote: “This all boils down to how I no longer think it wise to work for you, let alone look you in the eye.”
He responded apologetically. “I did not intend to take advantage, but understand that I used poor judgment,” he said. “I hope you can forgive me. You are a rockstar of a professional and you are going to be great.”
Mr. Cailan’s star continued to rise. He was named a brand ambassador for Bordeaux wines; the Usual landed on Wine Enthusiast magazine’s list of “America’s 100 Best Wine Restaurants 2019,” and he made it a destination for winemakers’ dinners and “industry nights,” after-hours gatherings for restaurant workers, where professional connections are made and wine flows freely.
That is how Ms. Fernandez met him. She was on the bottom rung of the wine world, having moved from an academic career in public health. She said Mr. Cailan seemed supportive and capable of treating women with professional respect.
Around 1 a.m. on June 14, Ms. Fernandez received a text message from Mr. Cailan. She had been trying to get him to taste some wines she was representing, so she agreed to meet him in the bar at Atoboy, a restaurant near where she works.
“As soon as I got there, I could see he had no interest in the wines,” Ms. Fernandez said, noting that he appeared intoxicated. They talked shop, until he suddenly leaned over and kissed her on the lips.
When they left the bar, Ms. Fernandez was mildly intoxicated, and when Mr. Cailan invited her to his apartment to taste more wines and watch television, she agreed. There, she said, he started kissing her aggressively and trying to slide his hands under her dress. Ms. Fernandez immediately pulled back. “That’s not going to happen tonight,” she said she told him.
Mr. Cailan persisted, she said, even as she continued to say no, until he repeatedly slid his hands under her dress and tried to pull off her underwear. She kept swatting his hands away, she said, until she became angry and alarmed enough to leave.
“All I could think was, ‘I’ve got to get myself out of this apartment,’ ” she said.
Afterward, she continued to exchange occasional texts with him. She felt she couldn’t afford an enemy in the tight-knit world of New York wine professionals. “I’m new here, I’m trying to play nice, I’m not going to alienate somebody important just because he’s a jerk,” she said.
A few weeks after their encounter, Mr. Cailan was the guest sommelier at an event in the restaurant where Ms. Fernandez works. At its end, she leaned in to politely hug him goodbye.
Then, she said, he tightened his grip, slid his hand down her back to her buttocks and squeezed, in full view of her customers, his friends and her co-workers, one of whom confirmed her account for this article.
It was Mr. Cailan’s public aggression in her workplace as much as the incident in his apartment, she said, that persuaded her to contact The Times.
After the incident with Mr. Cailan last June, Ms. Makler told a few trusted colleagues in Los Angeles what had happened in New York. Some told her they knew other women who had been assaulted by Mr. Cailan as far back as 2014.
Royce Burke, a chef in Los Angeles and a longtime friend of both Mr. Cailan and his brother, Alvin, said he was “floored” when friends told him about the multiple allegations. He shared text messages with The Times in which he confronted Alvin with details of Ms. Makler’s account. Alvin replied that his brother denied the allegations, and that he himself did not believe them.
“I know he’s a flirt, but this all seems a little much,” Alvin wrote, later adding, “I can assure you this is all made up.”
Contacted for this article, Alvin Cailan wrote in a text: “There’s nothing for me to comment.”
Many women in the business say their complaints about sexual harassment have been dismissed or ignored.
Last March, Ms. Makler wrote an email to the natural-wine expert Alice Feiring, after Ms. Feiring published a warm review of the Usual on her website, The Feiring Line. “A candidate for any 30 under 30 list, he’s on fire,” she wrote about Mr. Cailan.
Ms. Feiring is one of the most influential writers in the business, and an idol for young women like Ms. Makler. (Ms. Feiring has written for The Times.)
In her email, Ms. Makler, concerned about Mr. Cailan’s conduct toward her and other women, sketched out the history of her relationship with him, and asked Ms. Feiring for advice, “from one wine woman to another.” She included no details about the incident, instead referring to her “assault” and writing, “I think you can assume how this story goes.”
Ms. Feiring responded the next day, offering some sympathy but discouraging Ms. Makler from going public, and chiding her for not resisting more strenuously. “It is up to us to learn to say no to unwanted sexual advances,” she wrote.
“Remember, he is not much older than you,” she added. “He has more wine knowledge sure. But he was still just a kid who has some growing up to do. You may have perceived him as a powerful person in the industry, but he was/is not.”
Ms. Makler said she was stunned and disappointed. “I couldn’t believe that victim blaming was the first place she went,” she said.
In an interview this week, Ms. Feiring said she knew Mr. Cailan only professionally, and wasn’t trying to protect him.
“I really regret not writing that letter with more compassion,” she said. “I responded impulsively from my personal experience of abuse, without reaching out about the details of hers. No one should have to experience the fear of retribution and be silent.”
