Richard Vayda’s Italian and Russian family, including grandparents who owned a beer and wine distributorship, gave him an early appreciation for all things culinary, with family gatherings where food, chianti, and vodka were equally abundant. Vayda grew up in Chicago, and worked in restaurants there before moving to New York to become an opera singer. He sang for small opera companies and churches, but it was really the long, nightly dinners with fellow singers and lots of wine and food that captivated him. He became a maître d’hôtel in New York, before moving to Paris to study Romance languages at the Sorbonne. There, visits to a local wine store where one could fill up a bottle with wine for seven francs increased his love and knowledge of French wines. When he returned from France, he took another maître d’ position, at a small Provencal restaurant, and started teaching wine and service classes at the French Culinary Institute. He later joined the staff of what was then the New York Restaurant School, and started teaching restaurant business courses. He has also taught in the restaurant management program at New York University, and started teaching at ICE about eight years ago.

Vayda has extensive experience as an entrepreneur as well. He opened a catering company in the 1980s, which was forced to close because of the financial crisis that took place then. Later, he opened a contemporary American restaurant in Hunter, N.Y., which he thought would allow him to both be a chef-owner and ski. The dream lost its luster with what turned out to be the worst ski season in 25 years, paired with the fact his restaurant did so well that he had no time to ski anyway. About seven years ago, he opened a café in South Norwalk, Conn., called Caffeine, Coffee and Chocolate Lounge, which he operated for five years before selling it because he could no longer stand driving up I-95 a minimum of three times a week, he says. But he does not exclude opening another place one day.

Vayda, who holds a master’s degree in culinary management from NYU and a certificate from the Sommelier Society of America, has traveled extensively to the major winemaking areas of the world, he says, for the sole purpose of learning more about what has been a lifelong interest. At 16, he decided to make his own wine. He bought gallon-size grape concentrates from California, which he then fermented in his Chicago bedroom, adding wood chips and tannin powders, and bottling them. He eventually figured out how to make a “pretty good product,” he says. He never sold the wine, reserving it for his family and gifts.