If it weren’t for Mel Dick, much of America might still drink jug wine.

As the head of Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits wine division since 1969, Dick single-handedly built a portfolio of wines from around the world and spread them across the U.S. The year he took the helm, Southern’s wine sales were around $890,000. By 2017, the company and its 22,000 employees tallied $6.6 billion in annual sales to 44 states, the District of Columbia, Canada and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Dick, the ambitious son of Jewish-European immigrants, was born and raised in the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. His eyes were opened to the wine and spirits business while working Saturdays at his future father-in-law’s store in New Jersey in 1956.

“I always loved history and geography, and I loved looking at the place names on the bottles, especially the faraway places,” he says. “I found the brands enjoyable.”

At age 21, after six months in the Army, Dick reached out to a distributor for a job. He was granted an interview as a favor to his father-in-law, where he was politely told that he had no experience. So Dick offered to work for free.

It was a bold gamble. At the time, he had just $30 in his bank account, as well as a young bride, Bobbi, with whom he celebrated 61 years of marriage in March 2018.

The man took a puff of his cigar, leaned back and said, “Young man, I’m going to hire you, and I’m going to pay you $41.92 a week, plus $15 for the car.”

After he had trouble getting his union card, Dick’s good friend, boxing legend Sugar Ray Robinson, called in a favor. He received his card shortly after, and his career was off.

Six months later, Dick became a sales rep for Gallo Wine Distributors of New Jersey. He began to send letters to co-founder Ernest Gallo in search of a bigger role at the winery. Two years later, he corralled Gallo in the bathroom during a sales conference. There, an impromptu interview was sparked.

Gallo asked Dick, “Will you go anywhere, any place, at any time for me?” He responded, “Yes sir.” Soon after, Dick began to sell wine in Texas, Chicago, Indiana, New Jersey and Florida for E. & J. Gallo Winery.

In Florida, he was approached by a new company called Southern, but he couldn’t imagine leaving what he thought was a dream job. The upstart business was persistent, though. Dick recalls a company representative even told him, “Please come with us. We need you. We promise you will never have to look back. We’re going to be big.”

After he talked it over with his wife, Dick started with Southern on March 16, 1969. He quickly created the company’s wine division.

“I had the ability and the O.K. to go anywhere in the world, anywhere in America, get wine brands and build a portfolio,” says Dick. “That’s what we did.”

Dick became a partner in Southern in 1984. He worked hard to improve staff education, where 10,000 or so employees have benefited from formal wine training. In 2001, France also honored Dick for his promotion of its wines with that country’s top award, the Legion of Honour.

Currently the SVP and president of the wine division at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, 82-year-old Dick shows no signs of stopping. He still heads in to his Miami office every day.

“I can’t wait to get to work in the morning,” he says. “I love the business. It’s who I am, and it’s part of me. I found out a long time ago that in order to succeed, I was going to devote all of my time to the business and to family, and not make room for anything else. There isn’t anything we will not do to make our organization better.”

Wayne Chaplin, CEO of Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits and son of founder Harvey Chaplin, has known Dick his whole life, and worked with him since 1984.

“It’s easy to look back 50 years and forget about what the wine business looked like,” says Chaplin. “Today’s huge wine list, the huge by-the-glass list, varietal wines—all of this stuff is second nature now, but in those days, it really wasn’t. Mel saw that way before anyone else and transformed the business.”

Dick has served as mentor to Chaplin and countless others in the company.

“Mel just never took no for an answer,” says Chaplin, who can run off a long list of “classic Mels,” or short sayings that Dick loves to repeat. “Those life lessons that he taught me over the last 34 years are things I will never forget.”

“It’s been a wonderful life,” says Dick. “I’ve made lifelong friendships with the greatest producers, the greatest entertainers, athletes, kings and queens, all because they loved wine and wanted to talk about it.”

For his countless contributions that have changed the way that we enjoy wine today, Wine Enthusiast is honored to bestow upon Mel Dick the Wine Star Lifetime Achievement Award.—Matt Kettmann