The Ed y Nick Story
An Interview with Ed y Nick of Vine Connections
A Q&A with Ed Lehrman and Nick Ramkowsky, founders and partners of Vine Connections, leading importer of the world’s finest portfolio of boutique wines from Argentina and sake from Japan.
Q: How did you start out?
Nick: "Ed and I are lifetime wine guys. I started in the business working at North Berkeley Wine Shop while attending UC Berkeley, eventually becoming the store’s manager and wine buyer"
Ed: "I started drinking and collecting wine as a hobby while an undergrad at Duke University, using the two bottom drawers of my dormitory bureau to properly store my small collection on its side. Ahh..the distant days of great $10 Bordeaux!"
Q: College years well spent! What came next?
Ed: "I headed to the Big Apple full of promise and short on skills and experience. What could I do but hang out, sell wine, and earn meager wages at New York’s premier wine shop, Sherry-Lehmann. After a short stint selling wine wholesale, and in a bid for a more self-supporting wine lifestyle, I made my way to the west coast to earn my MBA at UCLA before moving to San Francisco to work as Kendall-Jackson Winery’s first Marketing Manager. As I tired of endless workdays and off-dry Chardonnay, I eventually joined Seagram Classics in Rutherford as a Marketing Manager overseeing Champagne Mumm, Barton et Guestier, and Castello d’Albola wines. Learned a lot for sure, but the corporate wine gig was not for me."
Nick: "Meanwhile, I spent some time working as a sales representative for several Bay Area wholesalers."
Q: How did the two of you eventually come to cross paths?
Nick: "Eventually, I started my own wine sales and distribution company, representing top-quality California wineries, portfolios of some of France’s best wines, and a collection of several high quality wineries from Argentina and Chile."
Ed: "And I started my first business in '94: Passport Wine Club, which quickly became the U.S.'s premier mail order company for international wine selections and wine-of-the-month clubs. Nick became one of my key wine suppliers at Passport Wine Club, and over time we became great friends."
Q: So you were respected business colleagues and wine-drinking comrades… What made you come up with the idea to partner up to import these wines and form Vine Connections?
Ed: "Soon after I sold Passport Wine Club, I joined Nick on a trip to South America that changed our lives. After a brief but horrendous drinking stint in Santiago, Chile, we visited wineries in Mendoza, Argentina and tasted many wines from the just-completed 1999 harvest. We quickly came to the conclusion that we had to introduce America to the best wines from the world's 5th largest (but still fairly unknown) wine producing country, and we formed a wine importing and national sales & marketing company, Vine Connections."
Q: And sake?
Nick: "About a year after we started the company, Ed and I discovered the joys of premium, Japanese sake made by ancient, traditional, family-run brewers and we’ve never looked back. We are fortunate to represent 13 of Japan's finest premium sake breweries. These small, ancient, traditional family brewers produce some of the world’s most delicious premium chilled sake. Our youngest brewery is 86 years old!"