When Yannick Benjamin Googled “wheelchair sommelier” in the wake of the 2003 car accident that left him paralyzed, the results were not heartening. The returns told of a French sommelier with a crushed hand, but there didn’t appear to be any wheelchair users who were serving wine at the highest level. Before the accident, Benjamin, then 25, was working at the Ritz-Carlton and well on his way to becoming one of New York’s top sommeliers. The career perfectly blended Benjamin’s passions for wine and people; as a sommelier he could bring people together through wine. Becoming a sommelier was a goal he had worked toward for years. Now he was a T6 paraplegic aspiring to a field where no paraplegic had gone before.

“I thought, oh my God, what am I supposed to do now, get a desk job or just go back to school and become a lawyer?” recalls Benjamin. “But I really felt that there was no reason for me — or anyone with a disability for that matter — not to pursue their passion and work in the field they choose.”

That attitude, coupled with the drive that had helped him rise so quickly before his accident, set Benjamin on a long and difficult, but ultimately rewarding, path toward achieving his dreams. During that journey he discovered a new passion, helping others with spinal cord injuries, and used his hospitality and wine experience to co-found Wheeling Forward and launch the highly successful Wine on Wheels fundraisers for SCI. He also found his future wife and helped make sure that any aspiring sommeliers who Google “wheelchair sommelier” in the future will find a plethora of articles and information.

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After his injury, Benjamin wasted little time before plotting how he would get back to becoming a sommelier. A steady morphine drip didn’t keep him from drawing restaurant layouts while recovering from his spinal fusion in the ICU, and once he started rehab at Mount Sinai he surrounded himself with books about wine. “They would take me away from those few moments when I wasn’t in the best mental state,” he says. “They meant so much to me at that time because I was reading about places — about vineyards in Portugal, vineyards in southern Spain, the significant wine regions located in Germany and in France — and I remember thinking about them and imagining being there.”

When his therapists asked what his future work plans were, he told them he still planned to be a sommelier and tasked them with helping him figure out how to carry bottles and glasses on his lap without spilling, dropping or breaking them. “It wasn’t an overnight success,” says Benjamin. “I think my passion outweighed the failure. It came to where I no longer dreaded failure. Instead I embraced failure because I felt that every time I failed, I was good at taking it, breaking it down, and learning from it — and it only made me a better person.” (See below on his custom tray)

Alex Elegudin, a C6 quad, befriended Benjamin during their stays at Mount Sinai and says it was always clear he would find a way. “His passion for wine and the industry was so strong,” he says. “Yannick’s not the kind of guy that could have a desk job. He needs to be out there on the floor, working with people. It’s his calling.”

Benjamin grew up in Hell’s Kitchen watching family and friends work in the restaurant industry and focused on a career in the industry at an early age. Both his parents were French, and his mom was an excellent cook. “Once a month we all have the family over and everyone’s together — of course the main topic is always restaurants,” he says. “One of the things I love about wine is how it gets people together and how it gets people to talk about different subjects. It’s a very intimate thing. I always loved that fact. I always love being around people, and I always love hearing other people’s stories.”

At 19 he was working at Le Cirque, one of New York’s most esteemed restaurants. Before he could even legally drink wine, he was enrolled in wine classes. “I knew pretty much from when I was in high school that I was going to make hospitality my career,” he says.

Fellow sommelier and friend Pascaline Lepeltier says Benjamin’s personality is ideally suited for the field. “He really cares about people,” she says. “He is a genuine hospitality person. He’s really, really good at paying attention to the people around him and trying to make them happy.”

Those qualities could have made Benjamin an excellent food server, chef, or restaurant or bar owner — something he still aspires to — but it is his passion for wine that defines him.

“He loves wine for the right reasons, not for the label or for the fame, just because he realizes sharing wine should be simple and for everybody. He has this amazing quality of being super knowledgeable and an excellent taster, but he’s never arrogant,” says Lepeltier.

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Even with the ideal makeup, training and passion, Benjamin knew finding work as a sommelier would not be easy. He anticipated the difficulty of finding a venue with enough space for him to effectively roll around and serve in notoriously cramped New York, but he didn’t foresee some of the other obstacles that awaited him. He applied all over New York and ended up with “75 to 100” interviews. The employers’ responses ran the gamut from not knowing how to deal with a sommelier in a wheelchair, to enthusiastic but logistically unable to hire him. Despite receiving much encouragement, one interview nearly made him give up.

“The owner of the restaurant comes out and he says, ‘Uh, Yannick Benjamin?’ and I say, ‘Yeah.’ He started laughing nonstop and was incredibly nervous — it wasn’t like he was laughing hysterically at me — and he was just like, ‘Are you OK?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He asked what happened, and I said, ‘What do you mean, what happened?’ He said, ‘Wait, did you get into some kind of ski accident?’ And he just kept laughing and laughing … I had given up at that point. Rejection is one thing, but humiliation is another.”

Luckily, it wasn’t in Benjamin’s character to give up. He eventually found work at Le Du’s Wines in 2006 and then at the esteemed University Club in 2012. With one of the biggest cellars of any private club in America and a spacious floorplan, the Club has proved a perfect place for Benjamin to work on his craft. He appreciates the way the Club has worked to accommodate him and of course, the fact that it hired him.

“Most people think it’s really great that a wheelchair user like me is working and pursuing my passion, and they’re always impressed that the club would hire someone in my situation,” he says. “I know a lot of people who say hiring me is not a big deal, that’s what employers are supposed to do. But I tell them, no, 99 percent of the people I interviewed with or tried to work for did not want to hire me. It’s a pretty big deal.”

Looking back, the arduous process of finding a job was not without benefits. “Going in, I didn’t know if people were going to take me seriously or if they were going to be shocked,” says Benjamin. “But one thing that I have learned about being in a wheelchair is that if you come across as confident and comfortable with who you are, then I don’t think people are ever going to really notice.”

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Another unexpected positive outcome of Benjamin’s injury has been the creation of Wheeling Forward, a New York-based disability advocacy group Benjamin and Elegudin founded in 2011. The two were injured about a week apart and quickly became friends during rehab at Mount Sinai as they worked through the many issues that arise post-SCI.

“In rehab I remember how we always had friends and family come to visit, and many other people there with us didn’t have any friends or family. We realized how lucky we were that we had help to keep our morale up,” says Benjamin.

The two remained close friends over the next few years as they got their lives back together. Benjamin went to wine school, Elegudin went back to college and then law school and got involved in volunteering.

“We got to a place where we had been there for each other over all those years, supporting each other, and you know, our friendship grew,” says Elegudin. “And then one day we just said, ‘Hey, we can help others who weren’t as fortunate as we were, and we want to do it.’”

They launched Wheeling Forward in December 2011 and have watched it grow since. The organization now offers a variety of programs to help New Yorkers, including adaptive sports, fitness, nursing home transitions, social events, scholarships and more. Benjamin and Elegudin continue to work to raise the organization’s profile and expand its reach.

“We really complement each other well,” says Elegudin. “Yannick is very heavy on the development side and making sure that fundraising and partnerships are coming in. He loves that role, and is a natural in bringing attention and social media to the organization. And I’m very heavy on the programming side, putting all the programs into place, running them and spending the funds.”

One of Benjamin’s biggest contributions has been an annual fundraiser called Wine on Wheels. Benjamin envisioned the event as an intersection of his two worlds — wine and Wheeling Forward — that would bring both communities together by enjoying one of his passions to support the other. The results have been an unabashed success. The first Wine on Wheels in February 2012 raised around $20,000. The 2015 event, held May 2, has already grossed over $125,000.

“It’s such a cool event,” says fellow sommelier Heidi Turzyn. “New York City is so big and so competitive, and there are so many somms, and Wine on Wheels just stops everything and brings them all together for a great cause.”

Turzyn met Benjamin two-and-a-half years ago at another wine event, and the two are now engaged to be married next year. She remembers him being taken aback when she asked why he returned to the wine industry after his injury on one of their early dates. “There was no other option,” he told her. Now that she has gotten to know him and adapted to his religious early morning exercise routines and heard the stories of how he would wake up at the crack of dawn as a kid to go play hockey two hours away, she understands.

“His drive is beautiful,” she says. “Every day he is out the door, going. He just works really hard to make sure he gets done what he commits to and what matters to him. It reminds me every day to push a little harder.”

His friends say that willingness to go the extra mile is one of the qualities that defines Benjamin. “He’s always there when you need him,” says Elegudin. “I know I can rely on him for anything,” adds Lepeltier.

That drive and his innate ability to put people at ease are behind much of his success to date, and will likely help him accomplish even more, according to those around him. Elegudin shared a story from the first Wine on Wheels that illustrates Benjamin’s approach.

“The morning of the event while we’re setting up, he decides to break out an impromptu dance contest — right in the middle of the venue, like two hours before we’re about to start.  And all the volunteers and all the people who get there early just have this dance contest, and we give away a bottle of wine. He’s just really easygoing. It’s his thing.”

Benjamin is excited about expanding Wine on Wheels beyond New York and continuing to grow Wheeling Forward. His dream of owning and running a Cheers-like establishment remains alive, but for now he is focusing on his upcoming nuptials and simply being the best sommelier he can be. To that end, he continues to study for the Court of Master Sommeliers exam and a chance to earn the title Master Sommelier. There are only 147 Master Sommeliers in the world, and he would be the first paraplegic one.

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On top of all the normal rehab tasks, Yannick Benjamin had to figure out how to carry expensive wines and glassware to would-be customers. “One of the biggest challenges we have as wheelchair users is to be able to tend to stuff on our lap while we’re pushing our chair,” says Benjamin. “So if I have a normal tray on my lap with glasses on it, they don’t move. But as I start pushing, everything flies off. I needed something I could just put the glasses in without them moving, and through trial and error I was able to develop a tray with a carpenter. The eventual model, built by Jean-Paul Viollet, has specific slots for bottles, glasses and a decanter.

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