You haven’t lived the good life unless you’ve had the pleasure to lunch with Michael Aaron. Always early, the dashing co-owner of Madison Avenue’s longtime landmark, Sherry-Lehmann, has also taken every step to ensure that the meeting will be perfect.

He arranges with Four Seasons managing partner, Julian Niccolini to have a poolside table awaiting your arrival. Also there standing at attention is a chilled bottle of Lucas Carton Champagne and former race card driver Randy Lewis’s Race Car Red, a 2002 cabernet sauvignon-syrah blend from Napa, California.

“Wow, look at that bottle,” the always ebullient Mr. Niccolini muses as he starts to pour himself a splash of the red wine. “Would you like me to give a glass of this to Mrs. Helmsley?” Mr. Niccolini asks, gesturing with his chin toward the hotel magnate who’s seated nearby.

Then he quickly mocks himself. “No, no, maybe I should give some to Mr. Bush – he’s seated right over there.”

The president isn’t there, of course. A longtime Four Seasons regular, Michael Aaron takes Mr. Niccolini’s playful comments in stride. This isn’t the first time the Italian-born Mr. Niccolini has threatened to give away Mr. Aaron’s wine and it certainly won’t be the last. Such are the perils of power lunching in New York.

But more than an invitation to enjoy the good life, sitting down for lunch at the Four Seasons with Michael Aaron is also an opportunity to learn how this son of a former bootlegger helped to transform an idiosyncratic family business into the industry leader.

How did Mr. Aaron succeed where many sons of company founders have failed? In his case it was a combination of factors: taking risks, expanding on his family’s successes, having the foresight to hire and train employees who understand the essence of exemplary retail service and offering some the chance to play a real role in shaping Sherry-Lehmann’s future.

Originally called the Sherry Wine and Spirits Co. back in 1934 when it opened, Sherry-Lehmann was the brainchild of Jack Aaron, the legendary bootlegger, who took advantage of the end of prohibition and immediately after repeal opened a spirits shop on Madison Avenue and 62nd Street. His brother Sam Aaron joined him a year later and quickly became interested in wines, which at the time were under-appreciated in America. By the age of 7, Michael Aaron joined his father and uncle in the business, by helping the window dresser create the famed displays for which Sherry-Lehmann is still celebrated.

Learning the wine and spirits business as an apprentice proved invaluable for the young Michael Aaron. He watched as his father and uncle wrote and designed their earliest catalogs and advertisements. He studied their chief competitor, M. Lehmann, originally a Park Avenue butcher shop and grocery store that was founded by a German immigrant in the early 1900s and sold wines and spirits. He cheered when his family bought M. Lehmann in 1965 and renamed their shop Sherry-Lehmann.

Most of all what Mr. Aaron learned from his father and uncle was to always look for ways to become a pioneer in the industry, to innovate their operations and bring to market something for every pocketbook, from the modestly priced Beaujolais to the prized boutique California wines, like Screaming Eagle, that command a king’s ransom if you can find them – which of course Michael Aaron can.

Mr. Aaron describes some of challenges Sherry-Lehmann faced in the 1970s during the oil crisis.

“It was a tough time,” Mr. Aaron begins. “Our mark-up is only 24% and back then, interest rates were up to 18%.That made it tough to operate. I realized the only way Sherry-Lehmann would survive was to change how we operated and become more efficient.” So Mr. Aaron suggested the company start computerizing its ordering system, inventory controls, fulfillment and distribution.

“At the time we had about 25 employees. Each was taking the order differently. It was all done by hand back then. It made it tough on our warehouse, deciphering each one individually,” Aaron continued. “But as screwed up as we were at the time, our competitors were even worse.”

While Mr. Aaron saw his innovative idea reduce operating expenses considerably, he also recognized that his father and uncle’s catalogs and New York Times advertisements were effective sales tools. Today the Sherry-Lehmann catalog is still an industry legend. Published six times a year, with a print run of 250,000 copies, it reads like a wish book for wine aficionados who pour over his clever descriptions of each producer and their finest wines.

Investing more than $1 million dollars in newspaper advertisements each year, Sherry-Lehman’s full-page sale announcements are another example of Mr. Aaron’s dedication to expanding on programs that worked for his father and uncle.

“My Uncle Sam took a gamble in the late 1960s and bought 1,000 cases of Beaujolais from a British minister of transportation, the Right Honorable Ernest Marples, who owned a vineyard in France,” he said. “Back then, that was a vast amount of wine so Sam took out a full page ad in the Times announcing a price reduction of the great Beaujolais. For at least a month afterward people came running in to get a bottle. Today our ads are very effective, but their shelf life lasts at most a week, so we buy about 100 full pages a year, sometimes double-page spreads.”

In 1990 when his uncle stepped down, Michael Aaron was named Sherry-Lehmann’s Chairman and Michael Yurch, who at the time was managing another small wine shop, was named its President.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows him that Michael Aaron took the plunge and hired and outsider and in the process transformed Sherry-Lehmann from a family business to an industry powerhouse. Devoted to hiring and training exemplary retailers has always been his passion.

“Our busiest time is always December,” he said. “We hire lots of temporary people just for that month. And we invest in them almost a week in training. These are people who already love wine and spirits. They’re wine educators, retired investment bankers, chefs and writers. We literally spend $2,000 to $2,500 on each one in time and materials to teach them as much as we can about wine. It’s a great opportunity to learn about wine. We teach them about each grape varietal, Rieslings, Sangiovesse, Pinot Noir and all the others, too. And we spare no expense. Some of these bottles cost $150.”

“We put our trainees on the floor for the first time right before Thanksgiving with a list of suggestions for wines that work well with turkey because we want to give them confidence,” Mr. Aaron explains as he swirls the pasta around his fork. “We know people will be looking for those wines and we want to make our trainees comfortable making suggestions. Nearly 99% of our customers are fantastic. They know so much about wine and we learn from them. There is no way we can all try every bottle, so we listen to what they say.”

What are New York wine buyers saying about French wine?

“When that boycott happened soon after September 11, I hardly noticed a dip in sales at all,” Mr. Aaron recalls. “I told CNN that when they asked me. I made some sort of a joke that Americans say one thing out one side of their mouth while they drinking French wine out of the other side. You cannot imagine the mail I got about that one. But you know what? I looked into it and those letters weren’t from my customers. And this isn’t about American people or French people. What am I supposed to do? Dump my inventory? Sever my relationships with the great French winemakers who I have known forever? Lay off my staff because two politicians cannot get along? It doesn’t make sense.”