Next Wave Awards Drinks Professional of the Year: Jade Ayala
Jade Ayala possesses a mean curiosity streak. The desire to learn and explore guides her role as beverage director for the Mystic, Conn. restaurant the Port of Call and its neighboring venue Oyster Club. Sometimes, it steers her toward unique avenues, such as cultivating a deep, professional-level knowledge of wine on her own.
“I have no formal sommelier training or accreditation or anything like that,” Ayala says with a chuckle. “But I love to focus on wine because it demands that you listen to its story: The region, the winemaker, the traditions, the choices that were made along the way. It’s more a study in anthropology than a beverage.”
Credit: Vlad Levine
Fearlessly building acumen from the ground up is nothing new to Ayala. The Conneticut-native was a busser at a farm-to-table restaurant in Hartford when the venue offered her a bartending role, despite not knowing how to make a cocktail. Over time, she amassed a level of knowledge and skill strong enough for Oyster Club and the Port of Call, which she helped open in 2022, to earn James Beard Award semifinalist nods for Outstanding Wine & Beverage program in 2025 and 2026, respectively.
Those early days still prove to be formative. At the Port of Call, Ayala works closely with the kitchen to build seasonally-themed drinks to interpret ingredients and flavor profiles in a complementary fashion. Part of this process compels her to cultivate strong relationships with local and regional farmers; these connections allow her to better understand the transitory nature behind her cocktail creations. “The interesting thing about working with farmers is that they don’t hand you ingredients. They hand you seasons,” she says. “To be that connected with the food makes me appreciate how fleeting everything is.”
Credit: Vlad Levine
Ultimately, her cocktails flesh out the woman-operated, maritime-festooned restaurant’s uniquely themed menu, where each dish and drink corresponds with a specific seaport. This can lead to drinks with ingredient combinations that push beyond the conventions of a typical neighborhood bistro, such as Pisco and Chicha Morada foam to reference Callao, Peru or tamari and sweet miso to acknowledge Gifu, Japan. For Ayala, properly executing this motif means ensuring her cocktails can extend the menu’s premise on their own accord. “The bar doesn’t orbit the food program,” she says. “The food and drink will ideally finish each other’s sentences, but our cocktails allow us to tell our story from our perspective.”
Credit: Vlad Levine
Ayala’s adherence to this motif, along with a drive to satiate her own curiosity about ingredients and flavor composition, yields a fun and critically acclaimed program. Her commitment to building a warm, inclusive space gives it its soul. Fostering such an environment is meaningful from both a business and personal standpoint: She’s involved with producing special events for her restaurants’ community-focused parent group, 85th Day Food Community, such as Port of Call’s recurring Sea Queen drag show. Her partner, Reneé Touponce is also the Port of Call’s executive chef and owner — not to mention a fellow James Beard semifinalist. While Ayala says the flowers she’s received help her remain focused on her work and creativity, maintaining a trusted environment that embraces all corners of the community is paramount to her success as a hospitality professional.
“Hospitality should never feel exclusive. It should always be free of any sort of judgement,” she says. “Ultimately, we want this space to be joyful.”
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