TERRANOVA SPIRITS - Key Persons

A native Californian, Jake Lustig spent much of his youth in Mexico, where as a teenager he worked as a translator and tour guide for visitors to the remote southern region of Oaxaca. When tequila's popularity began to boom in the late 1980's, Jake added mezcal distilleries to his artisan village tours. In working with these remote Oaxacan distilleries, Jake learned of the nuances in agave distillation and eventually began a small business selling quality mezcal to neighbors and visiting travelers. In 1995, with his work by now focused wholly on mezcal distilleries and production, Jake partnered with an 11-generation distillation family, the Arellanes family, to renovate the family's Destilería Real de Minas, and launched a newly created mezcal brand, Don Amado Mezcal. Following a couple of years of distillation and brand development work in Mexico, in 1997 the team began exporting the Don Amado Mezcal brand abroad to begin develop foreign markets. Having established experience in production and mezcal brand development, in 1998 Jake began work in the tequila business with the launch of Espolón Tequila for the brand's creator, Raúl Plascencia of Arandas, Jalisco, and Haas Brothers of San Francisco. With experience now in various tiers of the trade, in 2000 Jake was hired by Southern Wine & Spirits as the company's first Latin Market Specialist, which position he'd hold for the next decade. In this capacity Jake worked in the development of many famous global spirits brands, which included a variety of tequilas, rums, brandies and Scotch whiskies from Mexico and around the world. In 2010, Jake returned to Haas Brothers as the 160 year-old San Francisco firm's Director of Sales and Marketing. While building and managing a national network of independent distributors for the company, the role also entailed assembling and maintaining a portfolio of world-class, best-of-category spirits brands. With an interest in developing sales and marketing of these same spirits brands in the global arena, Jake created Terranova Spirits.