Garrison Brothers Distillery and Ledson Winery Take Top Honors  (March 17, 2025) — Winners have been announced in the fourth annual Los Angeles Invitational Wine & Spirits Challenge. A merlot from Ledson Vineyards & Winery (Sonoma County, Calif.) and a small batch bourbon from Garrison Brothers Distillery (Hye, Texas.) topped their fields to be named Best of the Best. The competition was established in 2022, in conjunction with Los Angeles-based beverage professionals (representing both the on- and off-premise channels), to highlight the best of the best wine and spirits producers in the world, and to introduce those producers to the largest market of consumers in the United States. Judging took place February 25-26, 2025. Says event producer Debra Del Fiorentino of Wine Competitions Management & Production, “Year after year, our judges continue to be impressed with the depth in each category. The quality of product was fantastic!” Competition this ye

What’s the opportunity cost of stopping to ingest another piece of content? Two sentences in, are you gripped with a guilty impulse to reach for your phone or keyboard and start making calls instead? I’d like to redirect your energy so that your success in sales isn’t random or acute, but consistent and chronic — the result of a strategic, focused effort that means doing less and selling more. Defining Success If I “get you” to read this article, does that mean I’ve written it well?  “Well,” you might say, “that depends on your goal, I guess. What are you trying to do here —put words in my mouth?” As tribal creatures, we tend to assume everyone around us is on the same page, that we define success in the same way.  In Chapter 1 of The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel argues that “Nobody’s Crazy” — every one of us handles our finances based on different values, informed

At the edge of the coastal redwoods lies a ranch where two young doctors from upstate New York, Marguerite (known as Beba) and Paul Frey, settled on 95 acres to raise their family. Their home is nestled between the Mendocino and Coastal mountain ranges in a narrow valley that opens into Mendocino County’s Redwood Valley. The headwaters of the Russian River lie just 5 miles north, past a Buddhist monastery, and upward into the mountains. The Frey family grew to twelve children amid the valley’s natural beauty and abundant native plants and wildlife while its vineyards and gardens thrived in the fertile soil.  “My mom and dad bought the ranch in 1962, the year I was born,” says Frey Winery winemaker Paul Frey (the younger). “Then they got all of us kids out there to plant the vineyards in 1967. We started making wine in 1978 and became an official bonded winery in 1980. Our wineries were organic from the beginning ― before the term organic was defined

Afternoon Brief, January 6th

Republic National Distributing Company Purchases White Mountain Beverage: Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC), the national distributor and broker of premium wine and spirits, purchased White Mountain Beverage, an independent Anheuser-Busch wholesaler, combining wine and spirits with beer to have one consolidated route to market...