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Most spirits brands are built to be sold. Fortaleza was built to win back a family legacy. Guillermo Erickson Sauza is the great-great-grandson of Don Cenobio Sauza, who founded one of tequila’s foundational names in 1873 and is credited as the first to export tequila to the United States. When his grandfather sold the Sauza company in the 1970s, more than a century of family ownership ended. Decades later, Guillermo, then working in aerospace and IT, went back to a small family distillery in the town of Tequila that hadn’t been part of the sale. He brought it back to life piece by piece, using the same tahona stone milling, slow fermentation, and copper pot stills his family had used generations earlier. Today Fortaleza is one of the most sought-after tequilas in the world. Bartenders, collectors, and fans hunt for it on shelves across the country.

In this conversation for Park Street University’s Hall of Fame series, Park Street CEO Harry Kohlmann sits down with Guillermo, whom he has known for almost 20 years, to trace that journey from the original Sauza legacy to Fortaleza’s rise. Guillermo explains why he refused to take shortcuts on volume. He still runs a tahona 24 hours a day, makes every bottle top by hand on site, and has kept the same wholesale price for almost twenty years. He also covers how bartenders and dive bars built the brand’s reputation long before retailers came around. Then he reflects candidly on what he would do differently, including why he would have stayed focused on one or two states longer before expanding, and on why Fortaleza remains proudly not for sale.

Park Street Imports is the back-office and importing solution for alcoholic beverage brands launching and scaling in the U.S. market.

Featured Guests:

Guillermo Erickson Sauza, General Manager, Tequila Los Abuelos

Harry Kohlmann, CEO, Park Street Companies 

Mentioned in the Episode:

Tequila Fortaleza

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Most founders assume that competing with the industry giants comes down to budget: bigger sales teams, bigger marketing spends, and bigger data departments. Joey Angelo and Wyatt Carder would tell you that a lot of that gap can now be closed for about a hundred dollars a month. Joey is the founder and CEO of Su Casa Mezcal, which in just a few years has grown into hundreds of on-premise and retail locations and surpassed several established brands to become a top-three-selling on-premise mezcal in multiple markets across the country. He's joined by his co-founder, Wyatt, who built the AI system behind their sales operation with no formal tech training.

In this conversation, Joey and Wyatt break down how a lean team can now run the kind of account-monitoring infrastructure that used to require a full operations department. They get specific about the exact tools in their stack, what it all costs to run, and how the system flags accounts drifting from their usual ordering patterns before a placement quietly disappears. Joey also explains how being able to text his sales data from the road changed the way he works the field, and why, for a traditional salesperson, AI turned out to be the opposite of the threat he expected.

Park Street Imports is the back-office and importing solution for alcoholic beverage brands launching and scaling in the U.S. market.

Featured Guests:

Joey Angelo, Founder & CEO, Su Casa Mezcal & sipMARGS
Wyatt Carder, Co-Founder, Su Casa Mezcal 

Mentioned in the Episode:

Su Casa Mezcal

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When Bryce and Jill Morrison started diluting flavored vodka into an old Dasani bottle so Jill could stop feeling bloated and hungover after a day in the sun, they weren't trying to build a brand; they just wanted her friends to stop asking for the recipe. Neither of them had ever worked in alcohol: Bryce came from hospice sales, Jill from occupational therapy. What started as a homemade fix for their pool days in southern Indiana became Mom Water, the first non-carbonated, unsweetened vodka water on the market, and today one of the top 5 independent RTD brands in the country, still family-owned and funded off a line of credit rather than outside investment, sold in tens of thousands of retail locations nationwide.

In this episode, co-founder Bryce Morrison joins the Park Street Insider to talk about building a national alcohol brand with zero industry experience — learning distribution, co-packing, and federal excise tax as he went. He shares why leaning into an unapologetically mom-centric identity, rather than chasing a broader audience, became Mom Water's biggest growth engine; how the brand scaled almost entirely on word-of-mouth and organic social content instead of paid marketing; and what it took to hand the CEO role to his sister, Kara, while staying independent and keeping the family-run culture that built the company intact.

Park Street Imports is the back-office and importing solution for alcoholic beverage brands launching and scaling in the U.S. market.

Featured Guests:

Bryce Morrison, Co-Founder, Mom Water

Mentioned in the Episode:

Mom Water

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Most founders assume the hardest part of building a spirits brand is making something people want to drink. Claudia Romo Edelman would tell you that's the easy part when your category doesn't have a name yet. Claudia is the founder of Sotol Romo, bringing a Mexican spirit with an 800-year history, and a denomination of origin that's only two decades old, to U.S. drinkers for the first time. She's joined by two people who've spent their careers deciding what does and doesn't earn shelf space and menu space: Dea Sims, co-founder of Pronghorn, and Jeff Bell, managing partner at PDT in New York City, who directs the spirits buying across eight bars.

In this conversation, Claudia, Dea, and Jeff break down what it takes to build a brand while building the category around it at the same time. They get specific about what actually creates value in a spirits brand beyond the liquid itself, and the exact number of cases per month an account needs to be pulling before a founder should even think about scaling. Jeff also names the single biggest mistake he sees founders make when chasing premium positioning, and it isn't the one most founders expect.

Park Street Imports is the back-office and importing solution for alcoholic beverage brands launching and scaling in the U.S. market.

Featured Guests:

Claudia Romo Edelman, Founder of Sotol Romo
Dia Simms, Co-Founder of Pronghorn
Jeff Bell, Managing Partner at PDT NYC

Mentioned in the Episode:

Sotol Romo

Pronghorn

Please Don't Tell 

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Most brands walk into a pitch leading with their product: the liquid, the story, the label. Mark Murphy says that's almost the last thing a buyer actually wants to hear. Mark oversees bar and beverage programs across North and South America for Soho House, and spent the prior fifteen years with STARR Restaurants, the last five as Bar Operations Director running beverage programs for more than forty restaurants across five markets. Few people have sat on both sides of the on-premise relationship, buying and building, longer than he has.

In this episode, recorded live at Bar Convent Brooklyn, Mark breaks down what actually gets a spirits brand into a bar, and why so much of what founders assume matters doesn't. What is a buyer really listening for in the first five minutes of a pitch? Why is the time of day most reps choose to walk in exactly the wrong one to learn anything useful? And what quietly separates the brands a buyer goes out of their way to protect from the ones forgotten the moment the rep walks out the door?

Park Street Imports is the back-office and importing solution for alcoholic beverage brands launching and scaling in the U.S. market.

Featured Guests:

Mark Murphy, Director of Bars & Beverage - The Americas, SoHo House

Mentioned in the Episode:

Soho House

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The industry has spent a decade optimizing for two generations that drink less than the ones before them, and in the process has mostly stopped talking to the two that hold the money. Gen X and Boomers control the majority of American household wealth, drink more often than any younger cohort, and moderate the least. Few people make that case more directly than Antonia Fattizzi and Brian Choi. Antonia, founder of the consultancy Cork and Tin, spent a decade as a rep on the street before launching her firm in 2012, and has built her practice around the generation the industry keeps forgetting. Brian, Managing Partner and CEO of The Food Institute, oversees what he calls the Bloomberg of the food and beverage industry, tracking real-time data across retail, food service, and manufacturing.

In this episode, recorded live at Bar Convent Brooklyn as Part 2 of our "Cracking the Generational Code" series, Antonia and Brian ask what the industry gives up by aiming nearly every sales and marketing dollar at younger drinkers. What does it cost a brand when the generation most likely to stay loyal for a decade is the one its marketing plan never mentions? Why are the consumers with the most disposable income in the country not buying the bottle you built for them, and where are they spending instead? What does authenticity mean to a cohort that has been marketed at for forty years and can identify a gimmick on sight? And which channels is the industry walking past entirely because it already decided who its customer is supposed to be?

Park Street Imports is the back-office and importing solution for alcoholic beverage brands launching and scaling in the U.S. market.

Featured Guests:

Antonia Fattizzi, Founder, Cork and Tin

Brian Choi, Managing Partner & CEO, The Food Institute

Mentioned in the Episode:

Cork & Tin

The Food Institute

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Every spirits brand today is chasing the same elusive prize: two generations who don't drink the way the ones before them did, and who are quietly rewriting the rules of when, why, and what they reach for. Few people are tracking that shift more closely than Dave Williams and Erica Duecy. Dave, President of BUMP Williams Consulting, has spent a decade turning beverage-alcohol data into strategy for suppliers, distributors, and retailers navigating a changing consumer base. Erica, founder of Business of Drinks and host of the podcast of the same name, has built her career translating consumer behavior into brand strategy for some of the best-known names in wine and spirits.

In this episode, recorded live at Bar Convent Brooklyn as Part 1 of our two-part series "Cracking the Generational Code," Dave and Erica break down what's actually driving Gen Z and Millennial spirits consumption, from why nearly half of Gen Z abstains entirely yet still drinks spirits as often as Millennials do, to why Millennials, now the industry's highest-value buyer, are still being marketed as "young drinkers." We explore how moderation is reshaping loyalty rather than ending it, why wellness has become a purchase filter even for alcohol, how RTDs are winning by removing friction from the decision, and why the sale is often won or lost long before a shopper ever reaches the shelf.

Park Street Imports is the back-office and importing solution for alcoholic beverage brands launching and scaling in the U.S. market.

Featured Guests:

Dave Williams, President, BUMP Williams Consulting

Erica Duecy, Founder, Business of Drinks

Mentioned in the Episode:

Bump Williams Consulting

The Business of Drinks

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In 2026, American whiskey isn't riding the wave it was five years ago, and every major producer knows it. For a brand the size of Jack Daniel's, that shift raises a harder question: how do you keep innovating when the whole world already thinks it knows you? Success at that scale can actually work against you; when everyone's already tried the whiskey, it's easy to get stuck on mute.

In this episode of the Park Street Insider Podcast, Chris Fletcher, Master Distiller at Jack Daniel's, takes the stage for a talk recorded live at the Park Street University stage in Brooklyn. He breaks down how Jack Daniel's has built its innovation strategy around protecting Old No. 7 while still carving out new space, from small-batch distillery-only experiments, to the record-setting proof of the Coy Hill single barrel releases, to reviving age-stated whiskeys Jack Daniel himself sold over a century ago. From the double-edged sword of brand recognition to what real transparency looks like on the production floor, this one is packed with insight into how an American icon stays ahead of a changing market.

Park Street Imports is the back-office and importing solution for alcoholic beverage brands launching and scaling in the U.S. market.

Featured Guests:

Chris Fletcher, Master Distiller, Jack Daniel's

Mentioned in the Episode:

Jack Daniel's

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In 2026, the spirits distribution tier is in the middle of one of its most dramatic realignments in decades. RNDC, once the nation's second largest distributor, has shed or transformed more than 35 markets nationally. Reyes is rising. Beer distributors are claiming more share. And for independent brands trying to secure distribution in the middle of all of it, the rules of engagement have changed. The brands breaking through are earning it before they ever walk in the door.

In this episode of the Park Street Insider Podcast, Emmett Strack sits down with representatives from Skurnik Wine and Spirits, T. Edward Wine and Spirits, Allied Beverage Group, and Revival Spirits for a live roundtable recorded at BCB Brooklyn. Together, they break down what's driving the consolidation, where the real opportunities are hiding inside of it, and what brands need to do differently to earn and keep distributor attention in 2026. From pitching for the first time to setting goals that don't blow up a partnership, this one is packed with straight talk and practical advice.

Park Street Imports is the back-office and importing solution for alcoholic beverage brands launching and scaling in the U.S. market.

Featured Guests:

Adam Schuman, Spirits Portfolio Director & Head of Innovation, Skurnik Wines & Spirits

Sara Harmelin, VP, Portfolio Development, Allied Beverage Group

Emily Wynbrandt, Spirits Portfolio Manager, T. Edward Wines and Spirits

Lloyd Sobel, Managing Partner, Revival Spirits

Mentioned in the Episode:

Allied Beverage Group

Skurnik Wine & Spirits

T. Edward Wines & Spirits

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Not every RTD brand gets acquired by one of the world's biggest spirits companies. Fewer still land Alix Earle as an investor along the way. Joey Angelo, co-founder of SipsMARGS and Su Casa Mezcal, did both, and the path there ran through 15 years inside the distribution tier, watching thousands of brands succeed and fail before building one himself.

In this episode, Joey walks us through what it actually took to launch a premium canned margarita during a pandemic, earn distributor buy-in when the RTD category was still unproven, and build a brand compelling enough to attract Alix Earle organically and close a deal with Sazerac. We get into the white space he identified in the RTD market, why celebrity partnerships live or die on the product underneath them, the route-to-market discipline that kept SipsMARGS focused, and what he learned about timing and patience when a major acquirer comes calling.

Park Street Imports is the back-office and importing solution for alcoholic beverage brands launching and scaling in the U.S. market

Featured Guests:

Joey Angelo, Founder & CEO, Su Casa Mezcal & sipMARGS

Mentioned in this episode:

SipMARGS

Su Casa Mezcal

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