“In sports, the expression is one player away. It's the missing ingredient separating good teams from great ones. Some teams do cross the line into greatness, but it's often difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when things changed. The same is true for wineries. Yet for Arista's McWilliams brothers—Mark, 37, and Ben, 34—that moment is clear. Both agree that their winery found the missing link in 2012. “That was the year they hired Matt Courtney, 44, to oversee their winemaking operations in Sonoma's Russian River Valley. Arista had been around for a decade, yet before Courtney's arrival the wines had...
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James Laube, August 31, 2015