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.  He relocated to his native Israel a few years back, but is in NY regularly ..read more

I sit down with Philip Duff Show stalwart Tony Sachs to catch up, drink some of the colossal amount of booze he has in his apartment, and pre-game an event that same 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 only interested in having your client on if they can talk about OTHER things th ..read more

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 like creating Outwalker Whiskey, the new Irish whiskey she fo ..read more

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 Cla ..read more

(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 love with tequila, cocktails, and Mexico, a ..read more

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 ..read more

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 Lucas, and when my wife Elayne and I were invited down to Cabo to give some seminars,  I suggested she ..read more

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 than we need sleeve gaiters and twir ..read more

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 than we need sleeve gaiters an ..read 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 about OTHER things than their prepared speaking points or their new thing, whatever that is, for a few hours. They need to be able to hang. Oh, and we won’t supply prepared or sample questions, or listener or “reach” stats, either.) Retain Philip’s consulting firm, Liquid Solu ..read more