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
 

Teresa Lombardi Terrell

Born in Canton, Ohio and raised in Orlando, Florida by an Italian-Irish family where every meal was an event, Teresa knew at an early age that her career would eventually take a culinary path. Spending most of her childhood years in the kitchen with her mother, Patricia, she learned the art of cooking family meals. She was also influenced by her paternal grandmother, Sophie, who was an amazing baker and home cook.

As a teenager Teresa started out working in her family’s small restaurant doing everything from decorating cakes, creating dishes and managing the staff.  Educated in art history, painting, jewelry, sculpture, photography and other various mediums, she sees a white plate as a blank canvas and food as art.

While having a passion for the arts, she received an opportunity to work in the legal field after college. After almost two decades, Teresa decided to move on from the legal field to follow her natural talents in cooking and baking by starting her own company, Sophie’s Bake Shop.  Based in Orlando, Florida, Sophie’s Bake Shop creates delicious and distinctive cakes and desserts inspired by her grandmother’s heirloom recipes. Over the past couple of years Teresa has had the pleasure of catering small events and celebrations for local companies, individuals and charities. She also works as a personal chef.

As an experienced traveler, Teresa understands how local cultures influence the regional cuisine, what the local ingredients are, and how they are being used.  She hopes that her experiences will inspire others to be equally adventurous in their culinary endeavors.

We are thrilled to have her insight and tasty recipes at BevX.

 

 
 

Taylor Eason

Taylor is originally from Atlanta and a self-proclaimed Southern foodie. She earned her undergraduate degree in English/French Literature from Colgate University, whose proximity to New York wineries lured her into a fascination with the grape. She was  hooked. After graduating, she enrolled at Ecôle Hotelière de Genève in Switzerland, a culinary management program that encouraged European wine country exploration. The addiction grew to include Italian, German and French vino/wein/vin.

After completing her studies in Europe, Taylor moved to Tampa, Florida to manage at Bern’s Steakhouse, famous for having the most extensive wine list in the world. After two years, she was lured away to the corporate world, designing and managing food and wine websites in 1997. Then, in August 2001, noticing a lack of spunky wine education for non wine snobs, she launched a weekly column, Corkscrew, that has now been printed in six countries around the world. Those vinous musings are found throughout these webpages.

Taylor still regularly treks the world stoking her love of wine, summing up her rather strong opinions virtually every day on her website. She resides in Tampa with her husband, Scott, and their coveted wine collection.

 

 
 

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.