Quality Wine & Spirits.

Jacob Goldenberg didn't think much of people who sold alcohol for a living. A former cigar maker and seller in northern Minnesota saloons, he'd become a distributor of candy and tobacco and avoided some opportunities to get into the beverage alcohol business.

"When selling liquor became legal in 1933, his three adult sons were all over his case to get into it," says grandson Jack. "He kept saying, 'There are no gentlemen in the liquor business.'"

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But his sons wore Jacob down, and one day he met with a stranger who made him an offer he found hard to refuse. "He told my grandfather, 'Mr. Goldenberg, you don't have any contacts with the distillers but you know a lot about distribution, and I don't know anything about distribution, but I do have this statewide license; you should become my partner.'"

Goldenberg agreed, but within a month, his worst nightmare became terribly real: his new partner turned out to have been an enforcer for bootleggers in the 1930s.

He sought to break the deal, but the assassin had already spent Goldenberg's money. "Grandfather said, 'Look, we're not going to be partners, so you're giving me my money back or I'll give you the same amount of money to go away.' When you think about telling that to a man who made a living killing people, it was a rather heroic thing to do. But it worked and so we got into the liquor business in 1936."

Today, the fourth generation of Golden.bergs is at work at what has become Quality Wine & Spirits, with Jack's daughter Rachel serving as a manager in the restaurant division (his other daughter Ann works for Southern Wines and Spirits in New York). Jack Goldenberg is also the current chairman of the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, and is also the latest in a series of second-generation WSWA chairmen; his father, Kalman "Kokie" Goldenberg, held the post from 1981-1982.

For WSWA, Goldenberg sees a crying need for a more expansive membership, as membership numbers have shrunk with industry consolidation. "When I started going to the WSWA convention in 1974, there were 800 members. I believe this last year there were about 110 main houses," he points out. Those 110 houses may do 80% of the industry's business, he says, but they account for less than 20% of the total number of American wine and spirit wholesalers.

"We have to become an inclusive organization, and figure out how to make the other 80% become part of it."

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He also believes WSWA must do a better job reaching out to suppliers and retailers. "When we go to lobby Congress or various governmental agencies, the people that we are talking to see us as the beverage alcohol industry--they don't differentiate that the agenda of the wholesalers is perhaps different from the brewers or distillers or bar owners or package store--they see us as one industry."

Goldenberg started working at Quality in 1968 at a time when his father, two uncles, a brother and a cousin worked for the company as well, His father Kokie Goldenberg had taken over the reins in the early 1940s, working alongside older brothers Harold and David (another brother Elliot, joined briefly). Best of friends as well as business partners, they worked together for many years.

While his father was in charge at Quality, Jack didn't work directly for him for his first 12 years in the business. Kokie was a guiding light in his career, how ever.

"Everything I know about running a wholesale house, both positive and negative, I learned from my father. 'A sale without profit is a sate without honor' was one of his statements. He also said, 'Do business with your friends because your enemies won't.'

"Dad felt that carrying our last name would be a terrible burden for a 21-year-old calling on the trade. So, he planned that first I should spend four or five years learning the inside operations of the business--credit management, distribution, warehouse layout, buying and transporting merchandise."

Working in a family business has its pluses and minuses, according to Goldenberg. "The odds are they aren't going to fire you and you'll get chances to make mistakes you wouldn't otherwise be able to. But you are definitely held to a different standard."

Despite the pressures that whole-saler consolidation has brought, Goldenberg doesn't see any reason to consider selling out. "Let's say you take that big pile of money--then what are you going to do? I like to think of myself not as the owner but the caretaker of this business. My father was given the reins by his father, me by my father, and, hopefully, my children by me."

And for himself: "When I was 20 years old, all I wanted was to be the best darn whisky wholesaler that ever was. Of course, that didn't happen, but that's what I wanted. I never wanted to be anything but exactly what I've become. If anyone asked me when I was younger what I wanted to be in 40 years, I would have described what I do today."