Until now, if diners at a restaurant asked for a wine suggestion to go with stewed snapper served over Jollof rice from Ghana, grilled jerk lobster tails from Jamaica, or Melba’s Signature Chicken and Eggnog Waffles in Harlem, they would likely be offered something sweet to balance — and cover — the spice and heat of the dish. Cha and Layla receive James Beard Award for Beverage Book Without Recipes Cha McCoy and Layla Schlack, teaching mentors in WestConn’s MFA in Creative and Professional Writing program, have changed that. Their book, “Wine Pairing for the People: The Communion of Wine, Food, and Culture from Africa and Beyond,” has been described as the first book to expand beyond a European focus on how wines can enhance the taste and improve enjoyment of food. Emphasizing its fresh perspective on foods largely overlooked in the world of wine, the book won a 2026 James Beard Media Award, a first for WestConn educators. “Groundbreaking is what we hear a lot in reference to the book, and I’ll stand on that,” McCoy said. “And we feel very confident that it is the first. The idea is not only that it highlights Africa and the Caribbean and other areas, but it doesn’t include European food or New American, either. That’s a big difference. And we are creating these ways of putting new wines in front of people, and if you like this wine from Bordeaux, I am sure you will like this wine from South Africa, right? So let me introduce that to you.” “Wine Pairing for the People” is also unlike many other wine books because it is not encyclopedic, with recipes, but based on McCoy’s experiences living in Italy and Portugal, and traveling extensively in Africa and the Americas. “It is driven by personal experience and storytelling and the wine itself and the food itself,” she said. For the past 15 years McCoy has hosted wine “communions,” first in her New York apartment and now in restaurants and other spaces, to educate professionals and amateur enthusiasts about wine and the foods they go with best. She is a certified sommelier and ran her own wine shop in her hometown of Syracuse. Schlack is a writer and editor who has worked for publications such as Hemispheres, Fine Cooking, Wine Enthusiast, and Whetstone, as well as Hearst Connecticut Media. She earned her MFA in Creative & Professional Writing from WestConn and now is senior editor at the publisher Clarkson Potter, acquiring and editing cookbooks. They first connected over social media to discuss their mutual interest in wine, and Schlack attended a McCoy seminar on food and wine pairing. Schlack wrote an article about McCoy for Wine Enthusiast. “I think the article I did end up writing was called something like “The New Wine Evangelists,” Schlack said. “So it was just kind of people who are breaking away from the more traditional, sometimes stuffier wine events to get people excited and involved.” As McCoy expanded her presentations to restaurants and other venues, an agent approached and offered to help sell a book, if McCoy would write one. It took a few years to work up the nerve to take on the project, but McCoy connected with Schlack again, and suggested they work together. “I knew her already as a strong writer,” McCoy said. “So that was what made it an easy request for me. I just didn’t know if she would say yes.” Schlack said yes. “For me, so much of my work as an editor has always been about helping other people tell their stories,” she said. “As a writer too, but especially as an editor. It really scratches an itch in my brain, the sort of logic, puzzle piece of it, where we can take all of these sometimes disparate facts and ideas and stories, and pull them together into a narrative like we did in the book. That’s something that’s really exciting to me.” First they put together a spreadsheet of what countries and cultures they wanted to include and an outline of what to report about each, based on McCoy’s personal experiences and Schlack’s strengths in research. Then they discussed the project and recorded their conversations, which were largely Schlack interviewing McCoy about the foods of the countries they covered, and which wine pairings she would suggest. Then they shared the writing in Google Docs. “Both of us would go in constantly back and forth,” McCoy said. “There wasn’t really this sort of defined, one of us wrote, one of us edited or one of us talked. It really was very collaborative.” In addition to the James Beard Award for Beverage Book Without Recipes, the book also received the 57th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Instructional Nominee, and was named a top-four finalist at Tales of the Cocktail 2026 Spirited Awards, a New York Times Most Interesting Wine Book of 2025, and one of Saveur’s Thoughtful Gifts for Wine and Spirits Lovers. McCoy and Schlack said they are not immediately planning new books, but they will continue their teaching at WestConn, and McCoy is expanding her Substack and continues to offer “communions” around the country and the world. Her message to those interested in wine at every level will be to try something new. “A lot of people are valiantly trying to figure it out themselves, but now they have a tool,” McCoy said. “Hopefully, this book is encouraging people to see that there is a space for foods they grew up with and love, and there is a space for you to pair wine with your own food in a professional setting as well.”
