Beverage industry icon Ron Rubin shares life lessons in his new book

Throughout his 50-year career, Ron Rubin has been working on a list.

Rubin, the St. Louisan who bought the fledgling brand The Republic of Tea in 1994 and made it a juggernaut, has spent decades tracking the factors that shaped his success. Those lessons, he says, have guided him on his journey, from running his family’s wholesale wine and liquor business to leading the tea brand and ultimately fulfilling his lifelong dream of owning a winery.

Now, he’s sharing them in a new book: Gold in Your Backyard: Lessons in Life, Leadership, and the Power of a Dream.

The wide-ranging book features Rubin’s experiences with innovation, risk-taking, collaboration, and strategic planning. But even while offering practical guidance for building a business to last, Rubin sets himself apart by folding in wisdom around self-care, work-life balance, and attention to small details—such as manicures.

Rubin dedicates the book to his father, Hyman A. Rubin, the entrepreneur who founded Central Wholesale Liquor Co. in Mount Vernon, Illinois. The younger Rubin officially joined the company in 1972, but his education in the beverage business had started much earlier. “I was climbing over liquor and wine cases when I was a little kid in the warehouse,” Rubin says. “They let me drive a forklift when I was probably 7 or 8 years old, which was fun.” 

After Rubin studied the science of winemaking at the University of California–Davis, his father put him in charge of growing the company’s wine business. He did, which gave him the confidence to propose other avenues for growth, including expanding the company’s geographic footprint and, eventually, investing in and distributing Clearly Canadian in the early days of the sparkling water bonanza. 

In 1994, Rubin took an even bigger leap by reaching out to The Republic of Tea’s founders about the possibility of a distribution agreement. Instead, he ended up buying the startup. As he writes, “In the personality tests that many companies use in their hiring practices, on a scale of 1 to 10, on issues measuring risk, I score about a 12! It’s just in my blood. Still, not everyone enjoys or thrives on risk—in business or in life. But here is what I have learned over the years: if you want to succeed in business, and you’re not by nature a risk-taker, that’s fine. But then team up with someone who is!”

Rubin internalized his father’s caution about debt, and he was determined to repay his loan from Southwest Bank in St. Louis. “It took me six years, three months, and 15 days to pay it off,” he says. “By 2000, we were debt-free.”

The St. Louis region has played a key role in the company’s growth—and Rubin’s career—ever since. Rubin moved to Clayton from Mount Vernon, Illinois  in 1995 so his son, Todd, could attend high school there. To this day, key parts of The Republic of Tea business are still handled in Illinois, including the manufacturing, production, and distribution facility in Nashville, near Mount Vernon. Although the company’s corporate headquarters are in Larkspur, California, it maintains an e-commerce office in St. Louis. 

In 2011, Rubin took another risk, purchasing River Road Family Vineyards and Winery in California’s Sonoma Valley. He has more than quadrupled its sales to more than 100,000 cases per year, while working to improve the quality of the product. He now spends June through November in Northern California—“escaping the heat and humidity of St. Louis and staying for the grape harvest.” His son now leads The Republic of Tea as the minister of evolution, also known as the company’s corporate president. 

“I’m his mentor, just like my dad was for me,” Rubin says.

Rubin also maintains the same openness to innovation driven by the younger generation, from e-commerce to podcasts to the use of AI. He is fully on board with The Republic of Tea’s use of robots to handle “pick and pack” in the Nashville facility, especially during the busy but hard-to-staff months leading up to the holidays. 

And Rubin is tapping into technology himself as he seeks new ways to expand wine sales into emerging markets to address declining consumption trends in the U.S. “In the next year or two, I’ll be learning all I can,” he says. 

Still, home plays a central role in Rubin’s book.

“How did a young guy like me, growing up in Southern Illinois, wind up building successful businesses in the distant worlds of premium tea and fine wine? By learning, by growing, and by taking some exciting leaps and risks,” he writes.

“The title of my book, Gold in Your Backyard, was an expression my dad used,” Rubin says. “And there is gold in your backyard, right here in St. Louis, in a 50-mile radius. You don’t have to go to Chicago or Kansas City. There are so many wonderful opportunities waiting. That’s what I want people—especially young people—to understand. They can do quite well here in St. Louis.”