It's Jackie Summers' Time to Shine

Jackie Summers just wanted to spend the rest of his time on earth day-drinking with cool people. This was a seemingly radical departure from the career path the 25-year publishing veteran had taken up to that point, but then again, he hadn't planned to have a golf-ball-sized tumor growing in his spine. In 2010, a week after a successful surgery to remove the growth, Summers found himself back at the fashion magazine where he'd been working, in a four-hour argument with the photo editor over whether the pinks and greens on the cover were sufficiently pink and green.

"All I could hear was death behind me, whispering in my ear, 'Dude, really? This is what you lived for?'" Summers says. It was not. Just before the surgery—which doctors told him had a high chance of leaving him with paralysis—he and nine friends rented a beach house in Cancun where they'd splurged on the best food and alcohol of his life, and whiled away the midday deep in conversation about things that mattered. If he made it through alive, could this be his everyday existence, he wondered, and could he be paid to do that? How hard could it be to start a brand?

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Nigh on impossible, he soon found out. But impossible has never been an issue for Jackie Summers. Just days before the relaunch of his much-missed liquor brandSorel, he spoke with亚搏电竞食品和葡萄酒亚搏电竞关于将产品作为黑人企业家的市场上的产品，为什么他对斗争如此坦率，这种红色饮料对非洲侨民意味着什么以及他想离开下一代梦想家的遗产。

Your drink Sorel is a version of Caribbean sorrel. What's the significance of this red drink?

If you go back 500 years,芙蓉在西非被称为强大的治疗方法。它有抗菌剂。这是一种抗真菌，是一种抗氧化剂。它比大多数柑橘类水果更具维生素C，并且是一种天然的壮阳药。一切都很好。西非人民会为此茶。这是关于健康，生活和家庭的礼仪。然后，跨大西洋奴隶的贸易开始，尸体从非洲大陆被盗，被塞进船底，他们也在沿途偷了香料。但是，对这种芙蓉植物可以与被奴役的非洲人一起前往加勒比海并扎根于那里的知识。yabo电竞投注

Something interesting happened, in that every island develops slightly different versions of this drink because they're all in different places on the spice route. If you're north on the spice road like Jamaica, you might get cardamom and allspice and lots of ginger. If you were deeper in the spice world, like Trinidad and Tobago, you might get East Indian influences like cinnamon and nutmeg. Every family did a version of this, but nobody ever wrote it down because our traditions were oral. It becomes an alcoholic beverage, too, because putting rum into this tea preserves it. It's this thing that you can give to the kids during the day and at night, a little rum for the adults.

我们之所以称其为“红饮料”，是因为它使我们想起了所有牺牲，所有的鲜血流失了。它使我们想起了火和能量。有这种对红饮料的同情记忆，它在散居侨民中切换了，但实际上，这一切都始于数百年前的芙蓉。

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这种饮料如何成为您的呼唤？

My grandparents immigrated here exactly 100 years ago. I'm West Indian on both sides. All four of them settled in Harlem, where my parents met. I remember as a child going to the West Indian Parade on Eastern Parkway, with two million Caribbeans out there dancing with floats and amazing costumes and music and all I wanted was the food. That's where I first discovered this sorrel. I was five years old on the streets of Brooklyn, eating curried goat, roti, doubles, and jerk chicken, then drinking non-alcoholic sorrel. All I could think was, "This is who I am."

I've always known sorrel and had a version of it that I made for friends and family. I never thought more of it than that. Then in 2010, I had this cancer scare.

What was the prognosis, and how did you cope?

我的医生在我的脊椎里发现了一个高尔夫球大小的肿瘤，说：“你可能会死。我们认为这是癌症。”

我说：“您的意思是'我们想'？”他说：“它在你的脊椎里。你不能进行活检。”我说：“如果它在我的脊椎内，你就无法进行活检。你怎么把它弄出来？”他说：“这很容易，我们将从您的脊柱上脱掉骨头。我们将通过我们要制造的孔将您的脊髓拔出。然后，我们将进行神经外科手术您的脊髓。但是，这种高尔夫球大小的肿瘤在您的脊髓中纠缠在一起。您有50％的瘫痪。我们要等到之后才知道。但是，如果这是我们认为是的肿瘤类型，那就是已经在淋巴系统中了。您可能有六个月的时间，应该井井有条。”

I had the surgery and I lived; it really adjusts your perspective.

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您如何治愈？

身体上,我认为我有一个物理治疗师visit and I was in my office the week after they had my spine outside my body. Emotionally, I had made peace with death. I totally made peace with the idea that I'd had a good run and my time was over. But the funny thing is, you can't unmake your peace with death; once you're there, you can't go back.

A week after I had this eight-hour surgery, I got into a four-hour argument with the photo director. She felt the pinks on the cover of the magazine were too pink and the grass wasn't green enough.

All I could hear was death behind me whispering in my ear, "Dude, really? This is what you lived for?" The next week I walked in ready to hand in my notice. Before opening up my mouth, they offered me a package, and I signed, and didn't look back. I didn't even read the paperwork. I cleared up my desk and I never looked back.

Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do next?

我做了手术前一周,我做唯一thing that made sense—go on vacation with nine friends at a beach house in Cancun with the best food and alcohol of my life. I'm sitting back a week after I've left this corporate career thinking to myself, "What do I want to do with my life?" I swear to god, the thing I wanted more than anything else in the entire world was to day-drink. I want to be around cool people in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, talking about stuff that matters over a drink, and I wanted to monetize it. I thought to myself, "I want to start a liquor brand. How hard could it be?"

那有多难？

It turns out it's nigh impossible. I immediately knew the only liquor I wanted to do was this beverage that I had in my kitchen for 20 years. If it wasn't sorrel, it would be nothing.

I had no money. I have no background as a food scientist. I say that impossible shit is kind of my schtick. There wasn't any reason to believe A: that after 500 years, me with a barely a high school diploma, was going to be the guy who cracked the code on how to make this a shelf-stable beverage or B: that me without a dime in my pocket was going to be the first Black person in this country to get a license to make alcohol. But I am uniquely broken, in that I don't know what I can't do.

那么该过程是什么样的？

I had 623 failures. It was me waking up every morning, brewing the batch and then torturing it to figure out if I could make a version that couldn't be broken. The first 500 tries were disappointing. I got discouraged. There's a joke I tell, "If you have an idea that you think is so good that no one's ever come up with it, it's probably a terrible idea." On batch 624, I figured out how to make this 500-year-old beverage into a shelf-stable liquid that was worthy of being a product.

这绝对令人难以置信，但是实际产品只是方程式的一部分。还有很多其他障碍。

我当时正在申请酒许可证，它的目的是过于刺激。这是一项为期10年的背景调查，您在工作的任何地方，无论您居住的地方，联邦，州和城市都生产的每一角钱。他们希望您在等待是否可以获得批准时在空白空间上支付租金。该过程最多可能需要两年。他们想要您将要使用的设备的密封号码，并希望您购买所有这些设备（可能是数十万美元），然后将其放在这个空间中，而不是在您等待查看是否是否制成角钱're批准。再说一次，我不知道我不能做什么。我做到了。

How did you keep going during this? Where did you find the money, the space, and the wherewithal?

The money: six months after I corporate America, I got a call from a buddy of mine at Hearst saying I want my people working on my magazines, come back and work for me, 32nd floor, corner office, six figure salary. In my heart, I knew I was going to tell him no, but I took the meeting because he was a buddy of mine. We're having burgers on the Upper West Side, I reach into my bag, pull out a bottle I've made in my kitchen, pay the corkage fee and I open it. We're drinking and I'm telling them what I plan to do and a man at the next table stands up and goes, "So, you're looking for investors?"

我站起来，握手，给他我的名片，然后拔出第二瓶，因为我知道做好了。我说：“带回家并与家人喝酒。如果您有兴趣品尝之后进行投资，我们将在一周之后进行交谈。”第二天早上，我什至没有看他的卡。我在钱包里rif，试图弄清楚我和谁交谈。我试图弄清楚亚历山大·伯恩斯坦（Alexander Bernstein）这个名字为什么如此熟悉。拥有伯恩斯坦基金会的是伦纳德·伯恩斯坦的儿子。他成为第一个为我签署论文的人。

空间：有人告诉我，红钩酿酒厂正在移动。亚搏电竞我去遇到了有一堆申请的人，伸出援手取得空间并接管它的主人。他把它们都放在一边，决定要让我进去。

Whatewithal：我会告诉您，我的祖父母没有一角钱到达这里。我的父母在抑郁症期间在吉姆·克劳（Jim Crow）的中心长大。我父亲是一位爵士音乐家，为阿姆斯特朗，埃灵顿，比利·假日效力。我妈妈是50年代的一名研究科学家，对动物中香烟烟的影响进行了一些首次研究。她正在教医生如何在老鼠上进行尸检，以获得看门人的薪水。我意识到自己是家人历史上拥有这种机会的第一个人。它之所以存在，是因为我站在每个来到我面前的人的牺牲。我没有机会没有任何货币。我的祖先会嘲笑我必须面对的问题。

My great-great-grandfather was born a slave in the Caribbean and freed in his early adulthood. My grandfather came here and he was a skilled tradesman and couldn't get work. When you're born in a colonized country, no work there either. When people talk about wherewithal, I don't have a choice. I don't have a right to not give everything because everything was given to me.

我已经与很多人谈论了期望和压力可能造成的损失。您如何照顾自己？

For the first few years, I didn't. I launched Sorel in 2012 at the now defunct Manhattan Cocktail Classic. Robert Simonson called it the new drink of 2012. I know nothing. I have no context. I've never bartended. I'm literally walking from restaurant to restaurant going, "Hey, I'm your neighbor. I make the stuff. You want to try some?" In September of 2012,幸运的magazine put it into a gift guide. Now I'm getting calls from around the country. Then Hurricane Sandy destroyed my distillery.

五英尺的海水在地下室和五个费用t of seawater on the first floor, all the equipment destroyed. The building is 180 years old, just structural damage. It didn't pay a dime, insurance didn't pay a dime. I spent three months digging out garbage and going out of my head to put this thing back together from nothing. We relaunched in 2013. Again, the brand did super well. The纽约时报calls it Christmas in a bottle,Starmagazine puts it on the celebrity page. I didn't have a press agent. We've been getting all this press organically because people just love the product. In 2015, I'm recruited by a large company who wants to take it national. We negotiate a deal. We sign papers. They reneged on the deal.

但是品牌很热。我们与地球上三家最大的酒类公司进行了三通竞标战。一家强大的公司获得了非常激进的竞标。他们叛逆。

The short version is that in 2016, I had a nervous breakdown, five years of 100-hour weeks, five years of literally just having enough money to pay rent and food, but not one dime more, five years of doing literally everything, myself, making the product, delivering the product, doing the tastings, doing the paperwork, doing the admin, everything. I had a nervous breakdown. I became homeless.

In December of 2017, I remember waking up to the very distinct sensation of snowflakes, melting on my face. That sounds idyllic until you realize, "I'm in New York City. I'm waking up outside in the snow." I woke up in a pile of garbage and my first thought was not, "I need to get somewhere warm." My first thought was, "I need to charge my phone because I have an essay due. If I don't meet my deadline, I'm not going to have money to get an apartment." That essay, I wrote it on my phone while I was homeless.

Andthat's the essaythat won you an Association of Food Journalists award. This must have taken so much out of you.

这不是我从我身上带走的东西，而是它给我的。因为一切都崩溃了，所以我有机会选择如何将其放回原处。我在2018年1月获得公寓时所做的第一件事是放在祭坛上，开始与祖先交谈。

他们对你说了什么？你是怎么公社的？

您可以谈论自己喜欢的一切，他们可能不会回话。但是，我与他们建立了一种关系，即能量无法创造或破坏，这意味着它们的某些版本仍然存在于宇宙中。已经过去了这个世界的能量结合在一起，但是它对我的成功具有既得利益，可以帮助我以我没有在开始之前没有的方式发展，而说实话，我没有努力。我已经练习道德已有20年了，但是我没有贴上祭坛，与祖先交谈，感觉就像我正在与比我自己更大的力量交往。这是超级基础。

I spent the five years before this launch really as a writer and an educator and an advocate for marginalized people. I earned a reputation in the liquor industry without a liquor brand behind me. Most of the people who know me from the past five years have never tasted Sorel. They have heard rumors. They know I used to make a product. I'm in this position again, where the industry has given me so much. Now I get to give back.

而且这次您不必一个人去。

The entire time that Sorel has been off the market, I have been in conversations with the biggest names in the industry. Pretty much everyone said the same thing to me, "This is a fantastic product with a proven track history. Good luck with that." Then in 2020, a police officer murdered George Floyd. Suddenly the world decided that racism was real and that Black lives matter.

我的好朋友杰夫·戈迪尼尔（Jeff Gordinier）向我伸出援手，他说：“嘿，杰克，人们知道您是这个国家历史上第一个拥有酿酒许可的黑人吗？”

我说不。”我已经知道了，但是以前没人在乎。在2020年，我突然得到了一群现在有兴趣带回Sorel的人。我正在与一个投资小组进行谈判。我们达成了合同协议。我写了非常具体的条款，以免被利用，因为我去过餐桌不止一次。我们达到了最后，他们基本上决定这些条款并不重要。我接触了我的酒律师，我从字面上说：“单词有意义吗？”他对我说：“您不是想象这个，他们正在试图改变您的协议的本质。”

我做了我通常不做的事情，因为我像我们许多人一样，管理着自力更生的创伤。我寻求帮助。我从讲话巡回赛中认识的是Fawn Weaver，一句话说：“小鹿，我遇到了我的投资者的绊脚石。您能提供任何指导吗？”这就是开始完全重新启动Sorel的过程。

How long ago did this happen?

March of this year. Literally, in the past six months, we've done a year and a half of the work. Officially, it's back up October 1. We put pallets on trucks last week. I will tell you that Fawn's impression of me initially was that I was an angry Black guy and I will tell you that Fawn wasn't wrong. I was angry. I happened to be a Black guy. But Fawn also realized that the product was good and people still wanted it. I had a good reputation. The fact that people perceive me as an angry Black guy was the only thing standing in the way of my funding. She didn't let that get in the way.

这次您将如何更好地照顾自己？

By the time I was having these conversations, I wasn't angry anymore. I'm someone who's struggled with clinical depression most of my adult life. I woke up on my birthday in 2019 to the sound of my own laughter. I knew that it was over and all this meditation and study and prayer to my ancestors had gotten into me. I wasn't unhappy anymore. Truthfully, I probably wouldn't have gotten a deal if I wasn't happy. If I got the deal, I wouldn't have been able to appreciate it because I wasn't happy. I had to fix the depression first. Then I could actually put all the other stuff in place that would allow me to enjoy this life.

I made it a point every single day to pray, exercise, and meditate. But here's the thing no one tells you: You can do those things forever. You might not change, but you have to commit to doing them anyway, you have to commit to the process and not the result. I committed to the process without the expectation that it would ever change. One day I woke up and it changed.

我几乎一生都患有临床抑郁症。有时我仍然会觉得它逐渐恢复。然后，我需要重新组织自己的界限，保护自己的能量并重新组合。现在，困难的部分只是确保我始终知道何时需要退后一步，何时我只需要在我的猫里与猫一起在我家中安静的时光，而没有通知。

这次您对Sorel有什么希望？

Whatever you've heard about Fawn Weaver, she's even a better person than that. I wrote Fawn an email and I said, "I'd like some guidance. What can you suggest?" The next day we had a guarantee of two million in funding. She said, "Don't worry about the money, it's covered."The next day.然后我把甲板寄给了她。她没有看过我的甲板。她对我进行了研究，她说：“我要给这个家伙一个机会。”

但这是小鹿做的不同之处：我一直在餐桌旁，这是一堆这样的公司，他们都有结构化的交易，这些交易将使他们赚很多钱，并基本上削减了我，并在我自己的业务中占了少数。小鹿从一开始就问我：“杰克，您想建立一家公司来出售或建立一家公司以持有吗？”

我看着她说：“唯一比建立一家觉得价值1亿公司的公司要好的事情正在建立一家他们负担不起的公司。说：“我想建立遗产吗？”答案是肯定的，我在这里为遗产。”

她绝对是想,她会说,麦e something so strong in this generation, the next generation can't break it. It isn't just the fact that we've got investment. Fawn is personally investing her time in me to help me really understand the nuances of the business. Help me really build a team that will actually be able to articulate all that needs to be done, to make sure that we've got the resources—mental, physical, not just financial. It is a holistic and encompassing program that says, "What do we need to do to make this successful."

To see a 100 years into the future? 500?

Yes. Fawn is trying to establish legacy. She's trying to find people who are trying to do the same. In that sense, our goals are perfectly aligned. Not only do I get to maintain my autonomy as a brand, but I am fully of the mind that as we raise, we pull. My job now is to look down and see who else needs a hand. In the same way that Fawn is raising brands up, I fully intend to do the same thing. I have no desire to be acquired. My whole bit is how do we take people who have been systemically cut off from actually benefiting from their labor and their intelligence and their creativity and give them the resources to succeed. If we're talking about the long term goal, that's my long term goal. Maybe putting out a book or two.

Sorel正式回到商店，并通过ReserveBar.comon October 1.