Wine-Based Cocktails, a Cuban Escape — Premium Blend Pt. 1-5

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Gino Santos, President of Premium Blend Cocktails, for a sprawling five-part series that covers one of the most inventive business stories in the beverage industry. Gino breaks down the brilliant — and completely legal — concept behind Premium Blend: wine-based spirits that allow venues holding only a beer and wine license to serve full cocktail-style drinks. But the business story is inseparable from the personal one. Born in Cuba, rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard from a sinking shrimp boat as a five-year-old, raised in Newark and Miami by a celebrated Cuban musician father, Gino and his brother Henry built Premium Blend from nothing — two guys, a borrowed bottling contact, and a product…