About our founder

At 20 years old, Mark Gerlach, was scrapping by as a journeyman tennis player in Germany. A friend told him about a tennis teaching pro position available at his tennis club in the Bavarian Alps. Not knowing what to expect he drove on down and met for an hour with the club president. He got the job but didn’t understand a word of Bavarian the President had spoken. The club was a bit different than he was used to. There were three red clay courts in the middle of a cow pasture in the shadow of the Alps. These people were avid outdoorsmen. They were nuts about sports. The tiny town of 10,000 had its own professional ice-hockey and soccer teams, a famous ski club. Everyone had a bicycle and used it. Everyone in the town grew up playing for one of these clubs in some sport or another. They weren’t the greatest tennis players in the world but they loved it.

Mark fell in love with the town and its people. He considers it home and family.

One of Mark’s first students was Hans Hopf’s, the local beer brewers’, Italian wife. Now, twenty-three years later Mark is importing his town’s beer to America. Hopf Wheat Beer is the best tasting wheat beer in the world.

Over the years Mark has developed a very fine appreciation for great food and drink. He collects wine and is a very good homechef. After seventeen years in the securities business Mark wanted to figure out a way to take advantage of all his acquired talents and tastes, and turn it into a business.

So he thought for a good long while, after adding up his passions: Sports, food, wine and beer, Bavaria and the language. He loved nothing better than playing two hours of rough tennis, then having a few cool beers afterwards. Then he goes home and works on dinner with his wife Christi. The food is always good around the Gerlach house.

Being that his wife Christi is in the wine business he didn’t want to compete with that and he felt it was a bit saturated with product. Then he flashed back on Bavaria and thought why not turn America on to the world’s best tasting beers from the Bavarian Alps. These are small microbreweries that no one tasted outside of that area.

Uplifters Spirits was born.

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