About Us

What We Do...

BevX is a lifestyle magazine with a beverage (wine, beer, and spirits) focus. BevX is published exclusively online - no trees are harmed in the making of BevX; only a few brain cells… We strive to be the best and most captivating publication in the world of wine, beer, spirits, travel, dining, and good times period.

We update our content each week and alert our subscribers via a brief email newsletter that is sent each Wednesday. Each week we offer new wine, beer, and spirits reviews, a featured Beverage of the Week, a Cocktail of the Week, and other fresh features including a look at our Fave Spots (retailers, restaurants, & bars) as well as travel and cooking. Subscriptions to BevX are FREE!

BevX encourages our subscribers to participate by adding your reviews to the beverages we examine as well as commenting on features and participating in our open forums. As you see, we mostly have fun doing what we love to do and sharing our passion with you.

Mission Statement

We are an organization dedicated to the pleasures of life. The subject at hand concerns many of life’s wants, not needs, regardless of how deep our passions run. However, experiencing a great meal, a dram, or a bottle of wine can bring us to a moment of royal living. Most of us don’t have a garage filled with exotic cars or live in a mansion on a hill. This doesn’t keep us from experiencing the best that life has to offer in a particular moment, perhaps in a moment of our choosing, or at a truly unexpected time. If we allow it, these moments can transform us, enrich us, and gratify us. The perfect meal at home, at a restaurant, or with friends can take us to a magical place. We can sample the idyllic dram at a distillery visit, in a pub, or on a perfect night that creates a snapshot for the picture book of our spirit. Please forgive the hyperbole. But if this speaks to you in some small way then you are one of us, and this site and our writings may speak to you as well. We have set out to create a one-stop resource for beverage information and opinion. We are equally passionate about history and the origins of the world’s great drinks and the people who make them so you will find this at Beverage Experts in abundance as well. If something fires you up, let us know. If there is something that you want to see covered, then again, let us know. We won’t always agree except of course when it comes to having an extraordinary life. Cheers! Sean

BevX People

The Beverage Experts Team

The Beverage Experts Team brings 100 plus years of experience in sum to our readers and this project. We have been buyers, sellers, writers, reviewers, sommeliers, educators, students, travelers, and primarily curious enthusiasts. We come from different backgrounds and have unique resumes while crossing professional and personal paths along the way. We have all had our own unique journey. We all have our various penchants while sharing a strong no-nonsense and anti-snobbery line of attack.

The Director
	Sean Ludford sean@bevx.com Sean Ludford has been involved in the beverage industry for more than two decades (So it’s far too late to pursue a respectable career path.) He has an eclectic resume including stints at restaurants, some of America’s top wine & spirit retailers, as a writer & reviewer, importer/distributor, and was once even lured to the South Pacific to help open a micro brewery. Sean is a judge at some of the world’s most prestigious competitions including the San Francisco International Wine Competition and the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Both are the largest and most prestigious of their kind in the USA. Ludford says, “Reviewing products is a tricky thing. It requires experience and an ability to put the beverages in context while always being fair.” At the retail level Sean developed and launched a popular and successful wine club that boasts a nationwide membership. In the beginning of this millennium Sean was the Spirits Director at Sam’s Wines & Spirits, the nation's top volume seller. While there he was able to increase spirits sales while strengthening global visibility. After leaving Sam’s Sean acted independently as an ambassador to a select group of handpicked import brands traveling the country educating and collaborating with wholesalers and key accounts. In this capacity Sean sought to elevate the recognition and understanding of unique, family owned brands that might otherwise be lost in the vast sea of products. Today Sean focuses on writing and educating. In 2006 he created BevX.com (Beverage Experts) a lifestyle web publication with a weighty beverage focus. BevX is a unique and independent voice in the world of wine, beer, and spirits punditry. Sean is also a regular contributor/columnist for several print magazines including, The Tasting Panel Magazine, Nightclub & Bar Magazine, Restaurant Hospitality, and several others. Traveling is somewhat of an obsession visiting wineries, distilleries, and breweries on 6 continents and countless countries. He speaks regularly on topics as diverse as Single Malts, Belgian Ales, Italian wines, and the vineyards of Bali (don’t get him going on that one). In his little spare time Sean enjoys cooking, hiking, reading, watching rugby, and seeking the perfect pint. If you see him out, buy him one.
Contributors
	Stacey Ballis Stacey Ballis is the author of four novels: INAPPROPRIATE MEN, SLEEPING OVER, ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT and THE SPINSTER SISTERS. She is a contributing author to two non-fiction anthologies; GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS and EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT BEING A GIRL I LEARNED FROM JUDY BLUME. Her non-fiction articles have appeared in the Frontier Airlines Magazine WILD BLUE YONDER, The JUF News, and she writes a regular food column called NOSH for OyChicago.com. She was a regular on-air contributor during the first season of The Rachael Ray Show on CBS, offering decorating, lifestyle and entertaining tips, with over eleven appearances. Ballis is the President of Dayton Associates Consulting Group, which specializes in strategic planning and organizational development for businesses, arts organizations and cultural institutions. She is currently at work on GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT, her latest novel for Penguin, due out Winter of 2009, and a stage adaptation of GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS. Learn more about Stacey at her website.
	Brooke Smith Brooke Smith was introduced to the industry at the age of 16 when she began working as a server in a café in her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. She continued to work in restaurants until completing her graduate school degree, but left it behind when she moved to New York City. There, she worked for several years as the editor of Beverage Media, a wine & spirits trade magazine to which she contributed many beverage industry-related articles. Brooke has also worked as a sales rep for a Spanish wines importer and distributor in St. Louis and in wine retail in Chicago, where she currently resides with her husband. She believes her year spent abroad living abroad in Bergerac, France further solidified her already burgeoning passion for travel and all things wine and food. Brooke is currently a freelance writer (and momentarily back in the restaurant server saddle) for various consumer publications and trade outlets, focusing primarily on - but not limited to - her favorite beverage: wine.
	Massimo (Max) La Rocca Since the beginning of his career, Massimo La Rocca (born in Sperlonga, Italy) has set an example in the workplace for reliability and professionalism, which he wanted to refine in order to expand its professional culture.  Armed with so much good will and determination, he decided to travel to London (Claridge's Hotel and Harrods' Georgian Restaurant) and then to Australia (Così Restaurant in Melbourne) to test new working techniques and deepen his knowledge of the English language, discovering a great passion for the "art of mixing drinks".  Back in Italy he attended a professional AIBES course (Italian Association Barmen and Supporters) and a Flair Bartending Course with Planet One. The results of this training inspired and encouraged La Rocca. He has been Bartending for three years at the "Lab" American Bar and at the Terrazza Marconi SpaMarine during the summer. He was making cocktails for increasingly demanding customers who enjoyed a creative and innovative mixology characterized by the use of vegetables, spices, fruit, foams and intriguing liquor infusions. Thus, La Rocca was always "keeping an eye" on the contemporary ways of mixing drinks.  At the "Legendary Contest" of the Bacardi Martini Grand Prix 2007 he stood out in Turin for dynamism, passion, and innovation, earning an important recognition for the cocktail’s style and work technique and being classified 7th in the nation in the category.  His drink recipes have been published in Cultura del Bere Magazine, and he has been quoted as an expert mixologist by local and national newspapers and magazines. After an incredible work experience at Rome's Stravinskij Bar at Hotel De Russie - The Leading Hotels of the World), he currently showcases his creativity and professionalism as a bar manager at St. George Hotel. He recently started a bilingual Blog for bartenders "with the right spirit" called LISTEN TO THE ICE, in order to share knowledge, useful information, recipes, and very interesting links with bartenders who put passion and heart in what they are doing.