The Philip Duff Show

Gareth's been a mate and fellow expat-in-New-York for a longish time, but I ran into him again recently when he hosted a mega-fancy private dinner in the already-mega-fancy members' area of private club Casa Tua, a dinner which I gatecrashed in a genteel manner, as my apartment was unexpectedly full of women playing mahjong. 

Gareth was the consummate host, introducing the 2025 special edition of Aberfeldy single malt, the rather delicious 18-Year-Old Bolgheri Tuscan Finish, and it occurred to me - after more than a few drams - that he'd be a fun guest on the show. 

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Daniyel is, in my opinion, the most naturally gifted brand ambassador I've ever met, but the reason he's been nominated for so many awards and other accolades is that since I met him many years ago, he has always been on a never-ending journey of self-improvement. I don't think I've ever seen him without a broad grin on his face, and if you spend ten seconds in his company, you'll have one, too. 

We caught up to talk about his origin story in Trinidad, working in fine dining and TGI Friday's, leaving mobile cocktail-bar catering entrepreneurship behind f...

Michael Neff, like so many of us, fell sideways into hospitality and now 27-odd years later, he's still in it, opening bars across the USA, consulting, podcasting and just plain bartending. 

He's a real bartender's bartender, and you can see that DNA in all the places he's opened or consulted on or worked at: Ward III, Rum House, Holiday Cocktail Lounge (NY), Cottonmouth Club (Houston), Inkwell (Omaha) and other bars - more than fifty of them - that he's opened, spanning seven US states. 

His approach to hospitality is thoughtful, insightful and empathetic; he can sl...

Robert's a swashbuckling figure even by liquor biz standards: son of a fighter pilot, he grew up in England, set up a chain of radio stations across Europe in his youth, ran an agency, then slipped sideways into the liquor biz (armed only with a degree in languages) and climbed the greasy pole at Bacardi for 26 years, ending up as CEO of North America, after stints running the business in Moscow and Asia, among others. 

In 2015, with another Bacardi refugee, Juan Rovira, RFR founded Samson & Surrey, a craft brand incubator which acquired Tequila Ocho, Mezcal Vago, Bluecoat G...

Angus is so old a friend that we can't remember exactly where we met but we're 99% sure it was at a bar show or get-together of some kind, probably in London, where he, a bartender from Oxford, was in on the ground floor of what we can now look back - after thirty years - to confirm was the birth of the Second Golden Age of cocktails. 

He and I were the two first people from the bar biz to have "Global Brand Ambassador" on our business cards (he for Tanqueray, me for Bols), and our careers h...

I've been a fan of Ben's since his first book, Schott's Original Miscellany came out in 2002, a collection of quirky facts and insights into subcultures; his 13 (!) subsequent books expanded on the theme and have sold more than 2.5 million copies, in multiple languages, to date. 

Ben also wrote two of the best "homage" books in the style of PG Wodehouse, which, if you're a Wodehouse fan, I urge you to read. 

His newest book, Schott's Significa, delves into the worlds of hidden languages and subcultures: open-outcry stock trading hand signals, the unspoken languages of the servers of...

The irrepressible Edvinas "Eddie" Rudzinskas is a fixture at just about every bar show and party, and the Instagram he created, @cocktails_for_you, boasts 565, 000 followers. 

We sat down during BCBerlin to talk about how he went from working in his native Lithuania to bartending in a small town in Ireland, falling deep down the rabbit hole of mixology, and founding Cocktails for You, initially as a Facebook page sharing all the seminars and events he'd attend, first in Ireland and then - often representing the Bartender's Association of Ireland, BAI - abroad. 

He's also re...

I've always followed the industry in Australia closely, as in my opinion it is, pound-for-pound, the best mixology nation on Earth; I've visited often, for teaching and consulting, and wrote a column in Australian Bartender magazine for some years. 

Last year the Sydney Morning Herald broke a story (sadly, only the first of many) uncovering alleged wide-ranging abuse at the renowned Australian hospitality group Swillhouse, with allegations ranging from management ignoring complaints right up to sexual harassment and rape by former and current staff. 

Several former Swillhouse employees who were victims, including Jenna and Alexandra, br...

I met Andrea in the End Times, even though we didn't know it, then; he made several delicious cocktails with Old Duff Genever for me, in New Zealand, in mid-March 2020, before the world closed down. 

Andrea is a remarkably cool guy who came from Italy to, first, Australia, and then NZ, to perfect his craft, knowing that first he had to perfect his language skills. 

He then worked months - even after winning national and international cocktail contests! - washing glasses, before being promoted to bartender. 

He's a great guy. This is a gre...

Edmund co-founded Nightjar, a speakeasy cocktail bar with live music, in London with his life and business partner, Roisin Stimpson, in 2010, with its first head bartender being Marian Beke. 

Nightjar quickly stormed the lists of nominations, Best Bars, and more, and a lot of that success was due to Marian's incredible cocktail presentations, in bespoke vessels, using skill and flavour combinations that upped London's game significantly, and have since been copied widely. 

Hand-in-hand with that was Edmund and Rosie's laserlike focus on music, vibes and guest experience. 

Nightjar expanded to a second venue, the...

I met Steve at Cologne Bar Symposium earlier this year, which also hosted the first-ever launch of Skrewball Peanut Butter Whiskey outside the USA. 

We chatted a bit and I attended his seminar; to say Steve's life is fascinating is like saying Elon Musk is a decent engineer. 

From a childhood of wealth in Cambodia with servants and bodyguards, to contracting polio and losing the use of one of his legs, to years of barely subsisting in a Thai refugee camp, being sponsored to come to the US as child, graduating high school and college de...

Our mutual friend (and PR guru) Laura Peet suggested I have liquor biz lifer Ken on, and he was a great guest! 

We chatted about the liquor industry, recent developments like GLP-1 inhibitors, the effects of phone-based gambling on drinks sales in bars, the Seagrams curse, and a whole bunch more, while I was drinking a Fre Damm Tostada a non-alc beer whose parent brand, Damm coincidentally is imported to the US by United States Beverage, where Ken's been brought in to bolster the liquor division. 

Ken on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenaufiero 

Sarah Morrissey is a little bundle of joy on the NY bar circuit, but also a skilled mixologist who's had her bar programs reviewed in the likes of the New York Times on multiple occasions, shepherded bar programs to James Beard and Tales of the Cocktail nominations (and wins) and is rightly respected by all who know her. She's done stints at Le Veau d'Or, Frenchette, Ernesto's, Dutch Kills, and many more. 

She recently also started a Substack with some highly controversial posts, and that's all it took to convince me to track her down for a c...

Return guest and one of my favorite people, Robin Robinson is back! He's a sales & marketing guru, a brand sherpa, a truly gifted storyteller and spirits expert - and he's just written another book, so back on The Philip Duff Show he comes.

We talked storytelling, Star Wars, some of the mindbending facts he's unearthed for the new book (First use of a sherry barrel for whiskey aging? 1854. Most important whiskey dynasty? The Haig / Stein / Jameson clan, and their Dutch connection. Molson brewing's whiskey history. Etc) the rise and stutter of Uncle Nearest, Powers inventing the nip...

Miguel became a mainstay of the burgeoning Spanish cocktail scene in the early 2000s, and we met in 2008, when he brought a crew of Spanish bartenders to the Bols Bartender Academy, which I had founded in Amsterdam. We stayed friends and soon after he moved to the USA, where we reconnected after I moved to NY in 2012. 

Miguel had a wild ride, from his native Spain to his parents' Venezuela, back to Spain and then on to the Dominican Republic, and finally the US, where he crushed his biggest challenge: opening 50 (!) bars restaurants and clubs for the J...

Me and Christian met almost twenty years ago; when I was still living in the Netherlands, my friend Robin Weiss asked me to help judge the Havana Club Germany bartender contests, and Christian was involved even back then. 

In the next few years we hung out at Havana Club contests in Sylt, Dusseldorf, Havana itself and several other cities I can't recall, plus of course Bar Convent Berlin, and Christian always impressed me with his ability to both hang with even the newest and most junior of competing bartenders, and still be up and supervising t...

This is the last of our Tales-recorded episodes, and our final collab with The Speakeasy!

Amir, originally from Tel Aviv, runs the cocktail program at one of Manhattan's hidden gems, the amazing Ophelia Lounge on top of the Beekman Tower, one of NY's last remaining true Art Deco skyscrapers, overlooking the UN. 

He was down at Tales helping us at The Australian Embassy, so myself and Greg dragged him out from behind the bar and into our makeshift podcast studio for a quick martini and a chat - enjoy!

Amir on IG: https://ww...

Francois escaped growing up in Belgium and, God help us, working in banking, to become a drinks writer, relocating to his beloved Spain and becoming an in-demand consultant to brands and bars, a World's 50 Best Bars Academy Chair, a drinks writer, drinks book author, and one of the two or three most expert and authoritative voices in the industry on vermouth. 

We've been friends for a long time, and this was a joy to tape and catch up on - enjoy!

Francois on IG: https://www.instagram.com/francoismonti/?hl=en

Francois's consulting f...

Sahil was down in New Orleans to re-launch Australian Bitters Co. in the US, and also because Australian Bitters Co scored both gold and silver medals in the New Orleans Spirits Competition, so me and Greg Benson of The Speakeasy lured him into our makeshift podcast studio and talked about the benefits of having royal family license plates, taking on the Goliath of cocktail bitters companies, and how he sees the bitters market as a whole. 

Enjoy!

(Pic credit: The Cocktail Lovers, link: https://thecocktaillovers.com/meet-the-maker-sahil-beri-the-man-on-a-mission-to-put-australian-bitters-on-the-global-map/

Sahil on LinkedIn: https://w...

Jake's one of the OG's of the UK bar scene, first making waves by winning multiple cocktail and bartending contests (including one where he won a £10, 000 diamond) when based out of his native Leeds, working in Leeds' top bars and then opening one of his own, then moving to London and opening beloved industry hangout The Portobello Star bar, co-founding the Alternative Bar Awards in the Star, and then upgrading both the Star and its in-house gin still to much larger premises, the Ginstitute, where the brand he co-founded Portobello Road Gin, is produced. 

Jake's a hilarious ma...

Down in New Orleans during the Tales of the Cocktail festival, I helped Procera, a luxury gin from Kenya, to run a private hospitality House, which came complete with a pool, so myself and Greg Benson of The Speakeasy had the bright idea to interview the Procera founders, Guy and Alan, while drinking martinis on the rocks, in the pool.

Yep, we invented poolcasting!

Alan, born and raised in Nairobi, is one of Kenya's most celebrated chefs, a restaurateur, trained brewer (he founded Kenya's first craft brewery) and as well as co-founding Procera, is raising...

Myself and The Speakeasy Podcast co-host Greg Benson were both in New Orleans last week at the Tales of the Cocktail festival, and so were Alexandre Gabriel, master distiller and blender at Maison Ferrand & Planteray rum, plus Matt Pietrek, spirits author & publisher, who lives in the Crescent City. 

AND Alexandre and Matt had just published (with Matt's WonkPress company) "The Rum Never Sets: A History of Naval Rum", so we all decided to get in the pool (where else to tape a podcast about naval rum?!) and talk about Mr Fogg, Alexandre's journey from being a cognac d...

I first met Christian, who is Argentinian, in 2000, at the Quest for the Best world bartending championships in Orlando. 

I'd competed in Quest and Roadhouse and other contests like those quite a few times, but when many of us saw Christian that year - who competed in the Rookie division - a lot of us just decided to retire from competition and become judges! 

He was that good; next-level, Michael Jordan-good. 

And he was just getting started: Christian went on to utterly dominate flair bartending contests, becoming practically unbeatable, not just in exhibition and...

I've judged many a cocktail contest with Ian, and he's got a new book out AND just been awarded the Lifetime Achievement award by Tales of the Cocktail, so it was time for us to catch up over a rum or two. 

Having played basketball in his native UK, and rapped - he still gets royalties from a song of his featured on the soundtrack of "Space Jam" - Ian built a career as the self-styled Global Rum Ambassador, evangelising the whole category at a time when there was very little education about, or even respect for, r...

Timo has been a friend for almost two decades now: first he was the bartender who served me, then my employee, then my bar's manager, and then a bar owner in his own right, before founding a bar show, and several other excellent bars. 

We could have gone for four hours. We've known each other through multiple marriages, got to know each other before my Dutch was good enough to switch from English, worked together, collaborated together...and always had a drink. 

(Although his new skull tattoos are straight up fucking insane, WTF Timo)

...

Krissy is a hilarious person that I got to know judging spirits contests together, and an accomplished drinks writer as well as being an outspoken proponent of the LGBTQIA+ community, so I wanted to catch up with her just as we round out Pride Month. 

We had a great chat, not even that much about that community, because we both had a lot to catch up on, and she had a hard stop as she had to go do some heavy drinking in Bristol, which is entirely understandable. 

But this was super fun! 

I f...

It's been a minute since we went over the news, and I've been rocketing around the world doing interesting things, so here's a DNN episode!

We cover bar shows like BCBrooklyn, the Gulf Bar Show, the upcoming BCB London, the risers and fallers in the annual Millionaires List of million-case-selling liquor brands, Pernod's restructuring, the tiny cocktail trend, how I found the best cocktail bar at Disney Paris, and much more - enjoy. 

Oh, and if you're doing something cool at Tales of the Cocktail, or if you want to be invited to the top-secret i...

I've known Lorenzo since his days bartending at The Savoy in London, and have also had the pleasure of his drinks during his stint at Argo Bar (HK).

Now he's opened Bar Leone, which is the fastest-ever to get to #1 in Asia's 50 Best Bars and #2 in World's 50 Best, after opening in June 2023. 

He's also about to open Montana bar in HK together with his fellow Italian, Simone Caporale. 

We got together to catch up after a dizzying array of guest shifts and pop-ups on his part, and talked bars, competitions, London, Hong Kong, Da...

Woody, a New Zealander, has been a fixture in Australian bartending for as long as I've been in the business, and he built his flair bartending and cocktail catering firm into a massive business there, wrote ten best-selling cocktail books, toured with Guy Fieri, burned out, came back, and has now founded a new solution to revolutionise the import-distribution of liquor in Australia, Drinks Network. 

Clearly, we were overdue - enjoy!

Hayden on IG: https://www.instagram.com/mrliquidkitchen/?hl=de

Hayden on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haydenwood639 

Me, Josh and a bunch of other people (including Julio Bermejo and Mauro Mahjoub) were together in Yerevan for Yerevan Cocktail Week (YCW), so I took the chance to tape an episode with Josh, who I always run into at Tales of the Cocktail, but never get to sit down and chat with. 

Josh is best known for Trick Dog cocktail bar in SF, a perennial award winner and two-time World's Best Cocktail Menu winner at Tales; in fact, Josh taught a class at YCW on cocktail menus. 

It was a special trip for Josh, wh...

Taped live in an annoyingly child-ridden park on a lovely day in NYC, myself and the rock 'n' roll Irish-Italian Rome-based cocktail bar owner Patrick Pistolesi cracked some all-American tariff-free beers, washed 'em down with mezcal and 'Murican single malt whiskey, and talked about Japan, billionaires, awards, his adventurous Irish mum, bars, cocktails, and the profusion of guest bartending, plus looots more stuff - enjoy!

Patrick on IG: https://www.instagram.com/_thepisto_?igsh=aDhxczI2YXJyOGU=

Drink Kong bar on IG: https://www.instagram.com/drinkkongbar?igsh=MXN1N29sdDRiYjVzdQ==

Nite Kong bar o...

Ektoras Binikos opened Sugar Monk cocktail bar in Harlem just 9 months before the COVID lockdowns kicked off, after a career in both art and mixology, having emigrated to Manhattan from his native Greece. While weathering the storm of the lockdown, he and his team started making and selling amaros and liqueurs, and this venture has blossomed into a company, Atheras Spirits, which has a distillery and a cocktail bar/tasting room, Bitter Monk, in Industry City, Brooklyn. 

We sat down on a gorgeous day and talked about his career, opening a bar, trying to keep the wheels t...

Regular listeners will know New York drinks writer Tony Sachs, who occupies a place in The Philip Duff Show universe somewhere between "henchman" and "drinking buddy". 

It's been a while since we convened to drink our way through the literal lakes of booze Tony is sent on a daily basis, and because he was off to drink Direct Martinis from the hand of Alessandro Palazzi that evening, we started out with a nice run of tasting no- and low-alc drinks, including new low-alcohol gin Second Sip from Leo Robitschek & Nick Strangeway, St Agrestis' Phony Negroni, Three Cents' s...

Warren has written six cocktail books - including on cannabis cocktails, as well as more conventional cocktail tomes - and he was way ahead of what is now a trend of quitting alcohol, back in 2018, during Tales of the Cocktail, which is like quitting skydiving mid-jump. 

He's recently created a range of delicious cocktail-inspired THC beverages named KLAUS, so it was high* time we sat down, guzzled a little Klaus, and caught up on the state of the world and the long, strange journey that took him from being a trained chef, a pasta entrepreneur, a private b...

Me and Rob have known each other since the early early days, back when I was still a competitive flair bartender in the 1990s, and together with fellow OGs Dean Serneels and Deborah Richards, he's just created and premiered the world's first documentary about flair, "Shaken & Stirred", so it was high time we had a chat. 

We talked about the wild network that was flair, before this Second Golden Age of mixology was properly underway: travelling the world, yard days, why - and how - flair makes you humble in a way mixology does not, why revolutions s...

Hayden's been a mate for ages, and his bar, a gorgeous, tiny, stripped-back speakeasy-type Mecca in Melbourne, is almost ten years old and has been winning awards and getting on lists quite a lot, so it was time we got together and shot the shit. This tiny little bar in Australia's second city got #100 on the overall World's 50 Best Bars list - not bad, eh?

I had no idea about Hayden's Euro ski-resort Flugel-drinking past, as he'd only popped up on my radar after his rather more seemly stint at the Merchant Hotel in Belfast, and then...

Without Jonathan and the London-based international Match Bar Group he built, spanning 40+ venues at one time or another, cocktails in the UK would look very different today. 

Jonathan, a cheerful Mancunian former lawyer, invested heavily in bartending expertise when building his group: his first head bartender for Match bar was the legendary, late Dick Bradsell, he hired Dale de Groff to be a training consultant and partnered with the much-missed Sasha Petraske to open only the second-ever Milk & Honey, in London. Match Bars opened in Ibiza, Chamonix and as far afield as Melbourne, shaping the careers of l...

I've known Nico since his time at Experimental Cocktail Club Paris around 2008, and he's very much the mixologist's mixologist; most people would say - I agree - that he's one of the two or three best mixologists working today. 

He just launched Kota Pandan liqueur with a banging party in Mace NY, so the next day we sat down to talk bars, pandan, awards, the state of the business, how he almost opened a place in Singapore, the importance of hiring, burning out on cocktails, his guest bartending odysseys, and our love of arrack - plus a w...

Few people in the cocktail world are as well known as Salvatore; you don't even have to say his surname before people begin talking about his many achievements in bartending, dating back forty years to his youth on the sun-kissed shores of the Amalfi Coast. He really is the  Maestro, and it's been a privilege to call him a friend for several decades now. 

From inventing the Direct Martini (while at Dukes Hotel, for guest Stanton Delaplane, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist who himself invented/popularised the Irish Coffee, depending on who you ask), to running ce...

Maxwell is an old friend who came to prominence with the drinks program he curated at Brooklyn's amazing Maison Premiere, winning James Beard awards, World's 50 Best Bars listing, and Tales of the Cocktail awards, to name but a few. (It is also, and to this day, a magnificent place for dinner or a cocktail).  He's also co-authored a cocktail book and created one of the first modern-era cocktail recipe apps. 

Maxwell recently finished working on a great project - more below - plus we'll take any opportunity for a chat and a drink here at the Philip Du...

It's nomination season!

If you enjoy The Philip Duff Show, take a minute to throw our hat in the ring for an award that is guaranteed to annoy everyone - link to nominate us for "Best Broadcast, Podcast Or Online Video" here: https://spiritedawards.secure-platform.com/a 

(Nominations deadline is February 13th, at 1159pm New Orleans time!)

Dolph's been a legend in Hollywood for almost forty years, from his first role in Bond movie "A View To a Kill", to his breakthrough as Ivan Drago in "Rocky IV", and more recently in "The E...

Nominate The Philip Duff Show for the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards - “Best Broadcast, Podcast, or Online Video Series” category: https://spiritedawards.secure-platform.com/a

David’s a legend in the liquor business, ever since he and his business partner came up with the idea for Baileys Irish Cream, easily the most succesful liquor brand created in the last half-century or so. 

He followed up with brands like Tanqueray TEN, The Singleton, Smirnoff Black and many more, and wrote about them all - including his failures - in his brilliant and funny book “That Shit...

Adam, a native Scot, spent a decade working for the Hawksmoor group, including a five-year stint opening and running the bar at their first-ever US branch here in New York, and he's just moved back to London, so I thought we'd have a chat.
It was a lot of fun and we got into a ton of different stuff, including US tipping culture, the "Sopranos"-esque nature of doing deals with American liquor brands, what it was like moving to first, London, and then, NY, plus a bunch more. 
Enjoy!

Adam on IG: https://www.in...

Caitlin makes some of America’s best eaux-des-vie, as well as America’s first-ever single malt whiskey, McCarthy’s.
(American Single Malt was only recognized by the US government’s TTB as a legal category about a month ago, but McCarthy’s started distilling in 1985. )

This is a nerdy one.
It was a great chat, though, discussing Caitlin’s unconventional path to being a master distiller, who’s drinking eau-de-vie, and wr had a tasting of some of the Clear Creek distillates and a six-year-old McCarthy’s that knocked me on my ass. Enjoy!


Caitlin...

I'm not sure exactly where me and Oisin met, but we definitely had a drink to hand!

Born in New Jersey, he moved to Ireland when he was just 10, so he's lived there for far longer than I have - in fact he moved there more or less precisely as I left - and has done far more cool stuff there than I ever did, from running great Dublin bars and music venues, to writing an award-winning cocktail book, to promoting Irish spirits (especially whiskey) around the world as a consultant and ambassador and, latterly...

Ever wondered what'd happen if I sat down with Steve Schneider for three hours over half a bottle of whisky and numerous beers?
Wonder no more!
Steve's been a friend since his time bartending (and later managing) Employees Only NY, and I've had the pleasure of drinking with him in EO Singapore, which he co-founded.
His newest place, Sip + Guzzle in Manhattan, is a second project with Shingo Gokan after they opened The Odd Couple in Shanghai.
We go into detail of how Steve got into bartending, how he made the step to bar ownership...

Giuseppe's an old friend, so when I heard he'd be in NY we made time to sit down and catch up over a negroni or two.
Yet another Italian bartender transplanted to London, Giuseppe worked at some of the OG cocktail bars back in the day, was the global ambassador for Martini & Rossi, founded onpremise agency Italspirits, created Italicus and Savoia and, more recently, the hugely successful Roma Bar Show.
And we talked about aaaaaaaall of that...and then went to Sip and Guzzle for some more beverages.

Giuseppe on IG: https://www.instagram.com...

Simon Difford once described Alex as being an even better mixologist than his mentor Dick Bradsell, and it was in the pages of Simon's print magazine CLASS than I first came across Alex, first being written about, and then as a writer for CLASS himself.

After bartending at the birth of mixology's Second Golden Age in 1990s London, Alex went on to work at one of the world's first cocktail consultancies, IP Bartenders, wrote cocktail book "Blend Me, Shake Me" in 2004, worked as a Grey Goose ambassador and founded his own British amaro brand, Kammerlings, which changed...

Mark, founder of the ground-breaking terroir-driven Waterford Whisky in Ireland and Renegade Rum in Grenada, is going through the grinder of both being in receivership*, and made time for a chat with me.

Mark is very open on the 'pod about the factors that led to the current situation, and there are some real nuggets in here, such as Waterford being French powerhouse distributor La Maison du Whisky's 5th best-selling whisky, why Waterford never did private casks, why you need to go deep, not wide (especially in the USA) and why whisky before the OPEC crisis of 1973...

I've known Rob for several decades now; we met in Korea when he was MD for global liquor distributor Maxxium, and I was doing cocktail seminars there for bartenders.
We've had personal and professional intersections  - not to mention more than a few martinis here and there - ever since, as he racked up a truly stellar resume in the liquor biz: Diageo, Shaw-Ross, Maxxium, Gruppo Montenegro (where he was also MD), and Disaronno, where he's currently CEO.
But, as he's a former Stoli CEO, I thought I'd have him on this week, as Stoli USA filed f...

An unusual one!
My friend, and top-rank bar PR guru Bianca Grisolia organised the first-ever Se Busca* Barmaid Week recently in Barcelona, and I thought it was a great opportunity to have a discussion about mezcal, ladies in bartending, and bar weeks in general, with Bianca (of PR firm BG Communications), Laura Alonso (Global Agave Director for SE Busca mezcal and Villa One tequila) and Meritxell Coll, brand manager for Se Busca at Spanish distributor General Goods.
This is a little Frankenstein's Monster - it's two chats stitched together - but I think it's great, and I...

I met Dr. Nicola, an English expat, just a couple of weeks ago, but I'd been hearing about her - and her groundbreaking book detailing the forgotten history of women's involvement in the cocktail's evolution, especially in the home - for quite a while, since before the book came out, in fact.

We say down for a nice long chat about what it's like for expats like us to have American kids, how university is mostly about networking now and not education, how women cleverly got themselves a seat at the table by recreating the amenities of...

I met Ambre at the infamous pre-Bar Convent Berlin networking hosted by Thorsten Husmann a couple of years ago, and learned she had just founded the first woman-owned tequila brand in the Netherlands, Lala.
Ambre is fascinating: a wellness guru but not woo-woo (very likely due to her no-nonsense Dutch upbringing) who came to love great tequila after living and teaching fancy yoga classes in Williamsburg (of course!) Brooklyn, she got the idea for Lala after avocado toast brunch and many a glass of good tequila, and she  now lives and runs the company from Amsterdam.
We h...

Robin's been a fixture of the spirits education world for as long as I can remember - I think we first met when he was still shepherding Compass Box Whisky for the US, at a bar show in Paris.
He's a remarkable raconteur - like a lot of the ex-actors littering the spirits industry - and a true expert across the broad world of spirits, but what really sets him apart is his structured, masterful approach to actually selling, a skill he learned in Silicon Valley and took with him to the liquor industry.
Unlike most people...

Emily LaRuffa has scaled the dizzy heights of Manhattan hospitality business, from bartending to managing and being a GM at every kind of NY joint from rock 'n' roll bars in Hell's Kitchen to the five-star luxury of Loews Hotel, The Baccarat, Major Food Group (and cheerful pirate Brian Miller)'s The Polynesian, and Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group's Manhatta bar-restaurant.
She's now founded an innovative consultancy, Oracle Hospitality Consultants, to share her knowledge with owners and managers who lack the time or experience to stop working in their business so they can work on...

Alice, an old friend from way back when, is one of the best drinks writers based in the UK, has won multiple awards for her writing about spirits, wine, beer,  cocktails and bars, is often to be found on UK radio & TV, and just published her new  book "The Martini: The Ultimate Guide to a Cocktail Icon", so we sat down over a martini (or in my case, some fine rum drunk out of a martini glass - beggars can't be choosers when you're staying in an AirBnB!) to talk all things martini....

Alice on IG: https://ww...

Kara defected to writing about spirits, cocktails and bars after starting out writing about matters financial, and finance's loss is cocktail's gain!
A New York native and friend, Kara has written seven spirits- and cocktail-related books as well as her newest venture, The Cocktail Cabinet, decks of beautiful playing cards themed around a particular spirit - the first two, Gin and Whiskey, are already out in the wild - with cocktail recipes curated and in some cases created by Kara on each card.

We sat down to talk about Kara's 14 years (and counting!) run as the...

I've known New York (well, Long Island) native Chris for over two decades, since we met at a flair bartending contest in the Cayman Islands, and he's maintained his rep as a flair bartender while becoming an accomplished mixologist as well, getting sober, winning Diageo World Class USA in 2017, crafting the Via Carota range of bottled cocktails and  - just now - founding Continuous Beverage Solutions AND all this while still holding down regular bar shifts at i Sodi here in Manhattan.

We sat down - over a St. Agrestis Phony Espresso Negroni, in my case, 'cos i...

The Cocktail Panda himself comes on The Philip Duff Show!
I've known Iain for years - he entered the G'Vin Gin Connoisseur Program which I used to run - and he's built a mini bar empire in Edinburgh so it was time to catch up on his adventures guest bartending for his  uncle in Korea, celeb liquor, how he got his start in the bar business and what he'd do differently now, plus how he got famous for inventing new ways to create flavour.

(We also drank some seriously odd stuff; I had a gin martini f...

Marshall - and the three top-notch places he runs the beverage programs for, Valerie, Lolita and Madame George - is one of Manhattan's best-kept secrets.
If you come to New York, I'll take you to one of these places (or all three, as they're conveniently located right next door to one another), and I guarantee you'll be blown away by the quality of the cocktails and the hospitality his team emanates in Midtown.

Despite me being insanely congested, we made time to sit down and chat about why it's always rum's year, the politics of selling...

Myself and Tim have been threatening each other with a podcast taping for over a year, and we finally found time to sit down, beverages to hand, and make it happen!
(This is a satisfyingly lengthy episode, clocking in at over 2.5 hours, and we'll do more of such chat fests in the future, too).
We talk about Tim's path into the industry as a cook and chef in some very high-profile restaurants in his native UK and then in Argentina, moving into drinks writing, the rise of spirits designed to be mixed, the delusions we must all...

Simone has come a long way since his Italian childhood in Como: while part of a legendary double-act with Alex Kratena, he led London's Artesian Bar to an unprecedented four #1 listings in World's 50 Best Bars.
Simone's post-Artesian career is even more impressive: Sips, his Barcelona bar together with business partner Marc Alvarez, was crowned #1 in 2023, he bought the revered classic Barcelona bar Boadas, the spirits brands he has co-founded, Canaima Gin, Amaro Santoni and MUYU liqueurs, go from strength to strength, and the online training portal he created, The Art of Shaking, reaches thousands of aspiring bartenders daily...

Francis, and, later Mark, have been friends of mine for a long time; we must have bumped into one another in Manhattan or at a Tales of the Cocktail event in New Orleans, but it was our mutual friend Dale de Groff who persuaded me to make the trek out to NJ to see their restaurants, which are incredibly successful and a mainstay of their community.
Their two places were also some of the first fine-dining restaurants in America to take craft cocktails seriously; they hosted literally the first cocktail-pairing dinner anywhere on the planet outside Manhattan at...

Me and Erik go waaaaaay back, to when I taught a class on the IBA's elite John Whyte residential training course in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, before Erik moved to London to start his stratospheric ascent to the top of the bartending world.

We sat down during Tales of the Cocktail to talk about all that: awards, scalpels vs. hammers, how cities like Mexico can suddenly appear on the cocktail map, bartenders telling bullshit stories during cocktail contests, creating the world's best bar tools by emailing with Google Translate, some of the madness of guest shifts and...

Simon's been a mate since the late 1990s, when he created CLASS (standing for Cocktail Liqueur And Speciality Spirit) magazine, the print forerunner of Difford's Guide and, in a pre-Internet world, just about the only way to learn about the revolution in cocktails that began sweeping London in the mid-1990s, which we both agree dates to the opening of the Atlantic Bar & Grill there in 1994.

Without CLASS and Diffordsguide, the latter of which later moved online and is bigger and better...

I've known Natasha for ages and it's no exaggeration to say she's changed the landscape of gin consumption in her native Missouri, and indeed in the wider USA as well.
Much as Julio Bermejo built a dedicated band of fanatics drinking 100% Blue Agave tequila at Tommy's, a suburb of San Francisco, Natasha did the same with gin, in her family's restaurant in St. Louis.
Today, the Gin Room is a must-stop for every serious gin distiller in the USA, and her Gin World festivals have entranced people around the US and as far afield as Mexico.
...

Zev's had one of the most interesting career arcs of any bartender I know, but when we finally sat down to tape an episode, it turned out to have even more twists and turns than I thought!
From Brooklyn to Melbourne to Montreal and back to NY, and from bartending for Heston Blumenthal Down Under to manning the shakers in the Meyerverse* that is Union Square Hospitality Group at it's Michelin-starred The Modern, to a COVID-era swerve into working as one of less than half a dozen spirits specialists worldwide at Sotheby's (who had just auctioned off a $44...

Anna is brilliant and this episode - taped partly in a hotel lobby in London, and then on Zoom - is just like having a drink with her, which is always great.
She's not afraid to say the things others won't, and her goal is to elevate anyone she works with, and especially to make bars better and get more women to embrace hospitality as a career option.
Enjoy!

Anna on IG: https://www.instagram.com/annasebastian3/?hl=en
Anna at Tales of the Cocktail:
- "The Evolution of the Modern Hotel Bar"...

Well, I've know Agostino since he was a fresh-faced young buck at Montgomery Place, one of London's best cocktail bars back in the day.
I remember when he moved to take the reins at the Connaught when it reopened, and the dream opening duo that was him and Erik Lorincz.
In the sixteen years since, Ago built a core around him with stunning professionals like Maura Milia and Giorgio Bargiani, presented at every bar show in the world and won every single accolade, too, as well as personally creating The Connaught Bar Gin.
Phaidon recently brought...

Benji (whose actual name is Fabio), is a friend, and a tremendous host even among his fellow Italian bartenders, which is really saying something.
After studing philosophy and being a professional soccer player (!), Benji went into bartending and is now a partner in the Farmily hospitality group that includes 1930 Bar, MAG Cafe and Tripstillery, all in Milan, as well as Bitter Fusetti, a bittersweet Turin-style bitter which has fast become a cult favorite throughout Italy, and the group makes gins, amaros and other products, too.
Benji was in NY to do two guest shifts, at Caffe Dante...

I kept bumping into David at events (like Philip Duff Show stalwart Tony Sach's regular get-togethers for writers and other waifs and strays) and he was always good fun to chat with, so me and him sat down in a shady spot inside Central Park* on a hot-as-balls day, on camp chairs, with a nearby wheelie cooler bag full of ice cold Negra Modelo beers and some 1960s IW Harper Whiskey (him) and some special releases from Widow Jane whiskey & FEW whiskey (me). 
He's hilarious, as you'll learn, and seems to have lived a dozen lives, from personally a...

What to say about my old mate Gegam Kazarian?
In his native Armenia, he studied biochemistry, then floral design, then silversmithing, started bartending, followed his passion for Spanish classical guitar by emigrating to Spain, started several bars and a mixology lab, won the Havana Club Rum European championships, the G'Vine Gin Connoisseur Program world championships, then moved back to Armenia after COVID, and started Yerevan Cocktail Week in 2023, and is launching Magika, a range of very high quality cordials.

In short, an annoyingly well-rounded man. And a great human.

I just returned from teaching...

Shannon, a Charleston native, is a powerhouse: an artist who left art due to its restrictions, a New York City bartender who championed rum when no-one cared about it (spoiler: a lot of people still don't care), the award-winning author of "Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails" and a consultant and ambassador for brands including Denizen Rum, Privateer Rum and Myrtle Bank rum. 
We sat down in the back room of Porchlight bar in NYC over quite a few rums to talk brand creation, just how crucial the Myrtle Bank hotel was in building "Brand Jamaica", her role in creating t...

Me and Jim met in 2006, when he entered the Bols 200 contest I organised, and I dropped by Pegu Club to see him next time I was in New York (I was living in Holland at the time).
He went on to open PDT (Please Don't Tell) in 2007, which almost immediately became the most famous cocktail bar in the world (and also served the best hot dogs to be had in any cocktail bar, too!) authored The PDT Cocktail Book, Meehan's Bartender's Manual (which I think is the best single volume all-round book about bartending) and, as you read...

Robb's been a mate for a long time - I think we met when he was a Tales of the Cocktail Cocktail Apprentice (CAP) - and the first event we ever did after I launched Old Duff Genever in Minnesota was at his bar, Meteor, which he opened in late 2019.
Timing, eh!
Robb and his business partners and staff weathered the madness of the 'rona, and recently garnered not just nominations from Tales of the Cocktail and the World's 50 Best Bars Discovery list, but also a Pin in the first worldwide release of Pinnacle Guide pins.
...

Another first for the Philip Duff Show!
Bianca, a Barcelona-based PR maestra, is a good friend and we were chatting about all sorts of things during the recent Paradiso Sustainability Summit* in Barcelona, and it turned out we both were interested in the practice and study of negotiation.
So, we agreed she’d read a book on the topic that I recommended - “Getting More” by Stuart Diamond - and I’d read a book she recommended -  “Never Split The Difference” by Chris Voss - and we’d meet up at Roma Bar Show in her native Italy to...

What to say about my mate Linden? 
He built Caffe Dante, already a decades-old fixture in New York, into the #1 rated on the World's 50 Best Bars list, then opened Dante West Village in the teeth of the COVID pandemic, and recently opened Dante in the Maybourne Hotel in Beverly Hills.
We talk about his origin story in Australia - I didn't know he was the son of a food critic - his forthcoming partnership with Neil Perry, where the fourth Dante will be located (spoiler alert: it's NY!) and a bunch more, all over a civilised martini t...

Mark is one of the most interesting people you could meet in the liquor business; drawing on his and his father's experiences importing and selling fine wines in his native England, he applied the logic of terroir to spirits, starting back in 2000 when he led a consortium of investors who bought the mothballed Bruichladdich distillery.
Mark and the team he assembled built Bruichladdich back into one of the most respected single malt distilleries in the world. 
After Remy acquired the distillery and its brands (including Botanist gin) in 2012, Mark started looking around for his next project, which b...

He was a bit knackered because he just got back from consulting on  a banqueting event in the Middle East, but London-based Tallaght* bowsie Ciaran Smith brought the heat in this episode, from supplying me with one of his Bottle Cocktail Shop spicy margaritas all the way from London (plus a bottled negroni, and very tasty they both were too), to giving surprisingly insightful** opinions on red & green flags when hiring, why you should take job applicants out for a coffee, reinforcing quality messaging around bottled cocktails by having a bricks-and-mortar location, why your first bar will be done o...

UPDATE SUNDAY 28 April - fixed the audio, which cut out at 15mins on Friday & Saturday.
The full 1 hour 45min session is now live!

Nick Papanicolaou just founded No Sleep Beverage, an innovative incubator taking minority investments in liquor brands in order to add value by combining his own entrepreneurial experience with big-company expertise,  in a unique, nimble company.
Their initial portfolio includes Barr Hill Gin, Solento organic tequila and Nine Banded American whiskey.
Nick previously headed up M&A at Pernod USA in the period when they acquired Del Maguey mezcal, Smooth Ambler whiskey, C...

I was introduced to Amir a few years back by our mutual friend Oron Lerner, of Imperial Group in Tel Aviv. Amir came to New York decades ago to try his hand at acting, and began working in hospitality as a side hustle. Along the way he also worked as a special-education teacher, but he's now, in my opinion, one of the best mixologists in Manhattan, running the beverage program at Ophelia Lounge on top of the art deco Beekman Tower near the UN, as well as at other properties in the group in DC, Miami and elsewhere. 
H...

I sat down yesterday with Philip Duff Show stalwart and drinks writer Tony Sachs to catch up, drink some of the colossal amount of booze he has in his apartment, and pre-game an event yesterday evening which saw New York bartending legend Brian Miller step back behind the bar. There's a celebrity rum-off, some tobala mezcal in a plastic water bottle, a mystery vodka that won't come out until September, and an old bottle of French rum. Enjoy!

Get in touch with Duff!

Podcast business enquiries: consulting@liquidsolutions.org
(PR friends: we’re...

Jillian's an old friend from her acclaimed days heading up storied New York cocktail bars such as Dead Rabbit, Death & Co, and Maison Premiere, to name but a few.
She relocated to Charleston, South Carolina a while back to open her next project with Sean Muldoon, Hazel and Apple, so it was great to make time to meet up when we were both judging a bartending contest in Folly Beach, which is just outside Charleston. 

We talk about what it's like to go from bartending to advising on liquor brands to creating them, what it was l...

Well, I couldn't pass up this opportunity!

I was at the third and largest edition of the Paradiso Sustainability Summit in Barcelona recently, organised by #1 W50BB 2022 bar Paradiso, which brought together speakers and bars from around the planet to share best practises on sustainability for bars, and have a bit of fun into the bargain.

Margarita Sader, co-founder of Paradiso and Summit, was there of course, as was Bianca Grisolia, the Italian-born Barcelona-based PR guru who helps make her clients like Paradiso famous, as well as Kaitlyn Stewart, Canada's first-ever global Diageo World Class...

(In my voiceover I say this is episode 2 of 3 for the Agave Series, but we swapped it with last week's episode, to coordinate with the release of The Tequila Ambassador V.O. book, so this - episode 2 - is now coming out 3rd in the series.)

Sophie Decobecq is a force of nature: from Lille,  France, she moved to South Africa to work on agave research after a university background playing rugby and studying biological engineering.
Having never had a cocktail, a chance encounter with Julio Bermejo (creator of the Tommy's Margarita) made her fall in l...

I first met Tomas Estes, a  West Coast American (who opened Europe’s first-ever Mexican restaurants starting in Amsterdam in 1976, and  co-founded Tequila Ocho in 2008) almost twenty years ago.
We last had dinner and drinks in Athens in December 2020.
The Tequila Ambassador V.O.(link to preorder below) is the "director's cut" of Tomas' book The Tequila Ambassador, first published in 2012. 
Five years ago Tomas started working on an update with his son Jesse, his business partner Phil Bayly, and Mitch Wilson, who had edited Phil's own book, Agave Love.
Tomas passed away in 2021, and the g...

This is the first in a mini-series of three about agave spirits and the people who make them.
(The WiFi wasn’t great, so sound quality is a little echoey at times and there’s the occasional pause in dialogue when Zoom froze, but that’s how it goes when you’re a 4-hour drive from Oaxaca!)

It was great to catch up with Dani, who I first met when she was bartending in Vancouver, part of the first wave of mixology in Canada back around 2008.
She moved down to start ecolodge Acre in Cabo San Luca...

I sat down with the extravagantly-hatted Damon Boelte himself, founder of the longest-running bars & cocktails podcast The Speakeasy as well as owner of Grand Army bar in Brooklyn, musician, and bartender of decades standing.
We talked about him going from never having worked in hospitality to being the bar manager in four weeks, did a Where Are They Now for the OG bartending crew of Prime Meats in Brooklyn, learn the origin story of the Hard Start cocktail (and who named it), and why we don't need umbrellas in hotel rooms for them to be luxury any more...

Well, we did it all. 
Awards? 50 Best? Alternative agave?
We got it all, and this was fun - plus discounts for awesome gin and the world's best spiced rum!

Get in touch with Duff!

Podcast business enquiries: consulting@liquidsolutions.org
(PR friends: we’re only interested in having your client on if they can talk for a couple of hours about OTHER things besides their prepared speaking points or their new thing, whatever that is.
They need to be able to hang.
Oh, plus we don't edi...

Sid's a fascinating chap; coming from a family background of East Coast (USA) liquor stores, he created Beverage Trade Network to operate spirits, wine and beer contests just about everywhere, as well as advise brands, all with the goal of helping brands market themselves and succeed in the marketplace.
There's a lot of cold hard truth truth in this episode about building brands, and we do a little crystal-ball gazing to guesstimate what'll happen where & when in some liquor categories in the future. Enjoy!
(Oh, and it's nomination time - if you enjoy The Philip Duff Show...

Greg's a top chap and I first met him years ago when he had a brief stint as GM at one of my local bars here in NY. 
A hospitality refugee, Greg dove deep into the beer world before coming to the dark side of spirits and cocktails, and is now the third leg of the sturdy stool that is the award-winning The Speakeasy podcast, together with its founder Damon Boelte and Sother Teague. 
Greg is possibly the oldest person on TikTok and as well as that he recently brought real agave syrup to the world (and it...

The champ is here!
Dutchman Nick Vrielink is definitely on a roll: Fitz's Bar, which he set up in Amsterdam's Pillows Hotel, won Best New Cocktail Bar at the Entree (Dutch hospitality) Awards last year, and the day after the Awards Nick boarded a plane to Rome to compete on behalf of the Netherlands Bartender Club (NBC) in the International Bartenders Association (IBA) World Cocktail Championships (WCC), where he won gold in the Pre-Dinner category with his Garden of Dreams cocktail (recipe below)!
We talk about building teams, the rising cost of accommodation in Amsterdam versus what...

Chris and www.abarabove.com which he founded with his wife Julia, is a bit of a legend. They've been cranking out top-notch online education centered around spirits, cocktails and mixology since 2013, with 661 (!) videos on YouTube and over 200 podcast episodes (including one with me, about gin & genever - link below!), all building on Chris' decade-plus career bartending in San Francisco's Bay Area and his desire to give young bartenders the education and tools he didn't have when he was coming up.
Today the company produces sought-after high-quality barware and has launched a number of in-depth online mixology training...

Tim's company Healthy Hospo is at the forefront of bartender health, both mental and physical, but it took a crisis in his career to put him on that path. After bartending in the UK and New Zealand, he became a liquor brand ambassador, first regionally in India and Africa, then globally for Bulleit whiskey, before one day hitting a wall - almost literally.

We talk about avoiding being kidnapped, adjusting your sleep cycles, strategies for day 1 of not drinking, doing things purposely, drawing cocks with your Strava runs, the madness of cycling in general and Alpine cycling...

Always fun to sit down with Philip Duff Show stalwart Tony Sachs and go over all the happenings of the year! 
We covered AI, ChatGPT's cocktail skillz, Skrewball whiskey, gonzo "collabs" like Absolut's vodka sauce made with Heinz and Empirical's Doritos flavour, and discussed the deafening silence around Jason Momoa's Meili vodka, the dastardly abv-lowering deeds of Beefeater Gin, and the likeability of Keanu Reeves. 
Along the way we had some fancy Tequila Ocho bottlings, the delicious El Viaje raicilla, Charbay's surprisingly tasty R5 hopped whisky, Ryan Maybee's fine J Rieger Rye whiskey, some 1980s Ancient Age bo...

Colin is a legend, an English native who doggedly pursued his dream of being head bartender at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, a position he achieved and dominated for thirty years, creating the Hemingway Bar along the way, serving & befriending celebrities, heads of states, and run-of-the-mill billionaires as well.
Now retired from the Ritz, he's busier than ever, running incredible drinks events around the world with his new agency Colin Field Bar Concept, and bartending a gruelling one shift a week at Paris' Maison Proust.
This was a great chat with an old mate, and we covered...

Forest is the O.G. cocktail blogger in France, since she moved there from the US in 2001 and started the 52 Martinis blog, adding a podcast a decade ago. She's also the author of several books including the new "Drink Like A Local In Paris", Academy Chair for France for World's 50 Best Bars, creator of the 52 Martini iPhone app, and a constant champion of all good bars throughout France. We caught up over a cocktail or two and went through the French scene, French spirits, lists like 50 Best and awards in general, and a bunch more, including what being a...

I fucking love Rachel Harrison.
We caught up over drinks and went for three hours straight!
Her firm Rachel Harrison Communications is a serious mover and shaker for dozens of hotels, resorts, liquor brands and bars across the US and around the world, with offices in the UK, Mexico and elsewhere.
There's a lot of PR wisdom in here (my favorite: "Hiring a PR agency means you have to work HARDER, not less!") but we also cover vibrators, hiring diverse candidates, gift giving, Breville toasters, lists and awards, her fitness journey and how she has 4 other...

Derek is a hospitality lifer who, after decades of being a bartender, sommelier and founding groundbreaking cocktail bars like The Colombia Room in Washington DC, transitioned in 2018 to being an advocate for no- and low-alcohol cocktails and wellness in general, training as an NASM coach, founding Positive Damage, Inc., and co-founding the Mindful Drinking Fest. Derek's an old friend and it was a joy to shoot the shit for several hours, especially as Dry January looms. We cover everything from Ozempic, beer goggles, the secret sorrow of your kid taking up soccer, Derek's viciously competitive streak that emerges playing...

It was great to finally catch up with Kevin; I’ve been chasing him to come on the podcast since earlier this year, when I read “Roundbuilding” a book he co-wrote with Daniel Waddy on the technique of making rounds of cocktails as quickly and efficiently as possible, so they can all be served at the same time and to the same quality (link to buy below). Kevin opened London bartender’s bar Satan’s Whiskers a decade ago after a stratospheric career at Jonathan Downey’s Match Bar / Rushmore Group that saw him become Group Bars Director, presiding over the bar...