Chris Condon
Chairman/CEO Trago International

Infectiously enthusiastic, intuitively clever and deeply determined, Chris Condon’s vision of a super-premium tequila is now to be fully realized in Trago.

“I tried 100% Webber blue agave tequila five years ago and was instantly on a mission to deliver the most sophisticated package and tequila to the spirits industry,” he recalls. “I was instinctively certain that tequila would become the fastest-growing category of spirit in the world and wanted to be a part of that explosive growth.”

Condon has followed an atypical course to the position of spirits company Chairman and CEO.  Born in Valley Stream, New York, Condon distinguished himself early on as a competitive athlete. Maintaining academic standards as high as his sports achievements, Condon passed up an opportunity to attend Princeton, turned pro and played the tennis circuit for five years achieving a world ranking.

But a desire to excel in business equaled Condon’s winning ways in sports, and he ultimately pushed tennis aside and propelled himself with intensity into finance.  He began his journey at Paine Webber as an advisor. After educating himself on mergers, acquisitions, IPO structures and developing the skill and true art of contract negotiation, Condon formed several start up companies. Condon was now armed with the expertise to begin his own tequila venture, and after securing a 15 year supply agreement and proprietary formula with the world famous Camarena family, he formally launched Trago International.

Richard Chianese
National Sales Director

Richard Chianese is a 35 year veteran in the alcoholic beverage business with vast and varied experience. After graduating from Fordham University with a degree in accounting, he began his career in May of 1972 working in a financial capacity for the Distillers Company LTD, eventually rising to Assistant Treasurer, the company is now known as Diageo. From here, he set up an import company to sell and market beer and wine through out the U.S. Since 1990, he has been on the sales sign with line responsibility in a number of markets, primarily East Coast, for the Sazerac Company, Bacardi and Pernod Ricard.

Mike Taub
Midwest Regional Manager

Mike Taub brings more than 30 years of beverage industry experience to bear on a land vaster than Texas on behalf of Trago International.
 
Born in Wilmington, NC, Taub’s family moved to Long Island and then to Texas when Mike was only seven years old.  He’s lived in Texas ever since.  Taub had the urge for the beverage business even before he left school.  After a summer job working in a liquor store after his junior year at the University of Texas at Austin, Taub knew exactly what he wanted to do: open a 5,000-10,000 foot liquor store—a fair size for the day.  He asked a childhood friend who served as Texas chain Centennial Liquors’ CPA and real estate advisor about how to do it.  “No one will lend a kid like you the money,” he replied, “and you need $200,000 just for the inventory.”
 
Taub worked briefly as a buyer for Neiman Marcus, but remained undeterred.  Another family friend in the business, Jack Shapiro, introduced him to two others: the owners of a local store and a statewide outfit, Lone Star Liquors.  “Go to work for the first one that calls,” Shapiro advised.  He stayed at Lone Star for four years.
 
He jumped to Max Golman Wholesale Liquors, where he worked better accounts, and after four and a half years, he asked why he wasn’t getting promoted to management.  The friend replied, “you’re making Max too much money.  Whoever he gets to replace you couldn’t hope to make him as much money as you do.”  From there he went to national distiller Brown-Forman Spirits, Ltd. (whose portfolio included Jack Daniels), where he stayed for five years and was one of their top five sales producers.  
 
From there Taub covered Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana for the David Sherman Corporation (which became Luxco), and Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming on behalf of Austin Nichols, which became part of Pernod Ricard in the wave of consolidation sweeping the spirits business at the time.  Taub then ran the beer and wine division for Longshore Liquors (part of Wirtz), which controlled about 35% of the Texas beer and wine market.  Then Glaziers, at $3.6 billion annually the second-largest wholesaler in the US behind Southern Wines and Spirits, brought Taub on board to cover 15 states for the mixer category leader Red River Brands, makers of the Red Eye Bloody Mary mix and other popular mixers (Neiman Marcus sells the original Red Eye recipe to this day).
 
With Red River about to be sold, Taub was casting about for a new opportunity, which knocked in the person of Richard Chianese, a spirits veteran he’d known at Pernod Ricard, who had recently been hired as National Sales Director at Trago International.
 
Asked why he came to Trago, Taub doesn’t hesitate.  “I had seen and heard about this super premium tequila with high quality in the bottle and unique packaging. I’d also heard about the great people who run the company—their strong entrepreneurial spirit,” he recalls.  “And I figure I’ve sold many tens of thousands of cases of it.”  Taub was instrumental in selling Juarez Tequila into the national chain Chili’s, which moves about 58,000 cases of liters annually.
 
As Southwest Regional Manager for Trago, Taub will cover Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Colorado, Missouri, Kansas and Montana—about a quarter of the land mass of the continental US.  His senior managerial and professional experience hasn’t dimmed his gritty, street-honed determination and smarts.  “I am looking forward to taking this great brand to the next level,” Taub concludes, “and the sold and unsold sales report is my road map to success.”