David Gluckman is a drinks industry legend, and he reeaalllly doesn't like the concept of the new non-alcoholic "spirits". This from the man who invented Baileys Irish cream liqueur, Tanqueray TEN gin, The Singleton whisky, and many more liquor brands. (You can read, watch and listen all about it, with links to old ads, videos and music jingles, by buying his book "That Will Never Sell" here: https://tinyurl.com/bdzx2anc, and read his views on non-alc "spirits" for free both here: http...
Back with a bang after a few months off, I thought I'd do a roundup of all the news of 2022: world news, bar & cocktail news, spirits business news and what I was up to myself. Damn thing ran to almost two hours and I still forgot to mention that Netflix show "Drink Masters". Get yourself a large beverage to hand, make sure you're sitting comfortably and hit play... Get in touch with Duff! Podcast business enquiries: consulting@liquidsolutions.org (PR friends: we’re only interested in h...
There's been a lot of debate recently as to whether gin (which was definitely first created in England) descended from Dutch genever - or from somewhere else. In this seminar I add a lot of information only available from Dutch-language sources, and try to explain why, although gin didn't have a single ancestor from a single country, the most influential distillate that led to the creation of gin was genever. Get in touch with Duff! Podcast business enquiries: consulting@liquidsolution...
I sat down last week with my old friend Oron Lerner in Tel Aviv , where he's beverage director for the World's 50 Best Bars-listed Imperial Craft bar, as well as their other excellent outlets La Otra and Bushwick. Over a few martinis and quite a bit of genever, we chat about life in a war zone, perceived happiness, the one kind of diversity people don't want to get behind and why you should turn your phone off and kick back with a glass of liquor in each hand from time to time, as well ...
I had huge fun taping this epic two-hour episode with the hilarious noted drinks writer and music fiend Tony Sachs, wherein we drink Silver Bullet cocktails with hundred-year-old kummel, Improved Holland Gin Cock-tails with hundred-year-old angostura bitters, ponder if you should lisp when you say Jerez, what a Katy Perry cocktail would taste like and have a celebrity basketball players' tequila taste-off. Also, Tony drinks a fifty-year-old bottled daiquiri. Don't forget to Like, Subscribe an...
FINALLY an episode that's just me hanging out with someone, slurping down drinks and shooting the shit! Me and Dan solve all the world's problems, from his troubling lack of Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards to how everyone can crash at my place in Portugal this summer, to what it was like to fly maskless on a plane, how Ray Charles loved genever and how Ted Haigh got it onscreen, all while we're inhaling Old Duff Genever and Fresh Victor cocktail mixes. This was a fun one. Get in t...
An OG seminar I first gave way back in 2010, on behalf of the French grape-based G'Vine Gin. It's been really popular and I'm usually asked to teach it again every couple of years, most recently at Cabo Cocktail Festival in Mexico in 2017. It's a mini- Genever 101 and a mini-Gin 101, but mostly it traces the origins of gin from when distilling knowledge first came to Europe, through genever to the birth of what we would recognise as gin in England, which was complete when the column sti...
This is a rebooted version of a seminar named The Science of Citrus that I debuted at the much-missed Manhattan Cocktail Classic in, well, Manhattan waaaay back in 2011 (I say 2015 on the recording, oops). Because it's now online and we can't nose the liquid samples we had back then of decanal, limonene etc., and because I've also edited out the organic chemistry portion that explained what those nosing samples were, I've renamed this The Joy of Citrus. This one has it all - goats in ge...
This podcast episode started life as a seminar at the Tales of the Cocktail festival many years ago, and the Powerpoint deck on my Slideshare.net account (www.slideshare.net/philipduff )was the most-viewed of all the decks I uploaded, so this is the audio narration for that deck, updated for 2022. You can see the deck and hear this audio over on my YouTube channel, and there are a few amusing visuals there too. Strap in to hear about DCL, Irish dairy farms, P Diddy, David Gluckman and Unicorn...
OK, not every episode will be like this, but we gotta start somewhere! This is the audio for a webinar you can see on my YouTube channel, and its a great place to start if you don't know much about genever (or mixology) - there are more in-depth seminars on my YouTube too, by the way. If you're a pro, you'll like the second bit of this podcast, when I showcase some of the more impressive and innovative cocktails being made with genever, by some of the best bartenders working all around the wo...
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 tha...
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 ...
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 bigg...
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...
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 ...
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...
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: h...
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, ...
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 fir...
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 pod...