Designated Drinker Show

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Duck. Duck. Gooseberry. We continue to feature inspirational ladies during Women’s History Month. In this epi we welcome to the show Patrice Cameau, the force behind CAMPspace, a business dedicated to providing affordable and private workspaces to create digital, video and audio content. We discuss what drives her entrepreneurship along with the importance of acco...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Coconut Crush As we continue to honor Women’s History Month, this epi welcomes to the show Brielle Caruso, Chief Marketing Officer at SelvaRey Rum, a luxury rum co-owned by musician Bruno Mars. As an infant in South Korea, Brielle was adopted by Italian-American parents. Throughout her life she’s faced challenges because of her Korean background, but this has only...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Talking To The Moon  March is Women’s History Month, so all month long we’re celebrating the contributions women have made to our nation, and are still making. One of these extraordinary women is our guest for this epi, Mireya Loza. ​​She’s an award-winning author, historian, curator at the National Museum of American History, and Associate Professor at Georgetown...

Talking history while sipping Pear-Rosemary Bee’s Knees. In part two of our interview with historian and Alexandria Living Legend McArthur Myers, guest host John Taylor Chapman and McArthur continue their conversation. Picking up at the dawn of the Jim Crow era, Southern Black people saw the promise of equality under the law embodied by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution reced...

Talking history while sipping our Truffled Dirty Martini. The era of Reconstruction offered great promise and could have radically changed the history of this country. However, it quickly became clear that emancipation in the United States did not mean equality for Black people. In the third episode of our ICON Series, guest host John Taylor Chapman welcomes McArthur Myers, historian and Alexandri...

Talking history while sipping Smoked Old Fashion. The Secret Seven were a group of African American activists who worked, often behind the scenes, to help integrate Alexandria, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s, countering Virginia's massive resistance against integrating schools. Fortunately, their activism pushed Alexandria forward when the city’s leadership was still averse to change — wh...

Talking history while sipping Toki Highballs. On a warm August afternoon in 1939, Alexandria (Va.) Library staff and patrons watched as a young African American entered and asked to register for a library card. When he was refused, he bravely picked up a book, took a seat, and began to read. This bold act was the beginning of one of America's first sit-ins and one of the earliest precursors of the...

We may have saved the best for our 4th and last Re-Mix Mix-Up epi. On this epi, three of our most insightful and empowering guests we have had the privilege of hosting share with us some hard-to-ignore facts on the amount of hunger found within North America, open our eyes to some of the challenges our neighbors face to simply survive, and prove that hunger knows no borders. But what they also do...

Find the perfect cocktail recipes to retox while you detox. They say, the third time’s a charm. And our third Remix Mix Up epi is all about the 3 key ingredients to living a life well lived—finding balance, sharing joy and eating well. So, who better to bring together than culinary disruptor, author and coach Kristen Coffield from epi 167 and corporate executive turned nutritional therapist Jay Vi...

Find the perfect cocktail recipes that’s 2x the fun! Get ready for some fun-filled flashback action featuring Designated Drinkers Micheline Mendelsohn from Epi 136 and Shawna Mendelson from Epi 140. We are opening 2022 with a line-up of shows that are a blast from our past—it’s a total mix-up of some of the best of our boozy banter with some of our most inspiring Designated Drinkers. So, find a co...

Find the perfect badass cocktail recipes to kick off 2022! We are opening 2022 with a line-up of shows that is going to be a blast from our past—it’s a total mix-up of some of the best of our boozy banter with some of our most inspiring Designated Drinkers. So, head over to designateddrinker.show to find a cocktail recipe—or five—from our library of libations and get ready to for some fun-filled f...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Red-dy For The New Year & She’s So Unattainable Oh what fun it is to close-out the holiday hustle and bustle with some fun-filled boozy banter, lots of laughs and even a dash of mindful intentions. Louise and Gina once again, warm our hearts as they share with us their family traditions, devoted friendship, and love for lavish champagne and potato chips! Now that’...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Now That’s a Holiday Emily Key pulls up a stool alongside Gina and Louise to explain how the Smithsonian has embraced telling an inclusive story–with the opening of The National Museum of African American History and Culture and the recent passage of legislation to create both a National Museum of the American Latino and Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Sweet Dreams At the crossroads of determination and dedication, you’ll find Erinn Roth, CEO of Ms. Jo's Petite Sweets and former contestant on Fox Network’s Crime Scene Kitchen. And if that isn’t impressive enough, she served 24+ years in the US Army before retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. Obviously, she knows how to deal with the heat, and on this epi, she share...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Fat Kid Milkshake Can women have it all? In this epi celebrity chef Johanna Hellrigl gets raw with us about balancing the demands of career and motherhood. As working mamas, we often feel like our baby and our job are both screaming in the back seat. When can we say we are enough and—oh boy will the guilt ever end?! Tune in as these three powerful ladies hash it o...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Bourbon Milk Punch Looking for some friends to get merry with? Join the club! In this epi we chat and sip whiskey with Brian Wohlert of the Commonwealth Whiskey Alliance. VP of a technology firm by day and suburban family man by night, Brian helped create a community to let off a little steam with friends over single barrel picks of whiskey. Sip, savor and enjoy t...

Get the featured cocktail recipes: Thai Pumpkin Boozy Iced Tea & Bourbon Co-Co-Cocoa It’s the 4th Annual Tipsy Tomfoolery & Tryptophan Friendsgiving episode, which means it’s all fun and no fuss. Not only does Gina serve up a delicious holiday-inspired cocktail recipe, Duane Sylvestre shares a cocoa-licious cocktail that is perfect for warming you up on a cold winter’s night. #CocktailingAloneToge...

We’re getting real about the reality of being on a reality show over a few really great cocktails. So, join us as we host Top Chef Jen Carroll and Candiace and Chris Bassett of The Real Housewives of Potomac for this live-streamed epi that definitely gets real! Looking for the best cocktail to accompany you while you listen. Then head over to our library of libations for the right recipe to get yo...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Here Comes the Sun & The Federal Restaurateur Dmitri Chekaldin and Beverage Director Jake Rice of Dacha Beer Garden join us for this raucous two-for-one epi where we get two guests and two cocktails for one listen! We hear all about the triumphs and tribulations of outdoor hospitality—from being so popular you sell out of EVERYTHING to not-so glamorous port-a-pott...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Well Grounded Chow down on this week’s eye-opening epi as we talk with Carla Pellegrini, Executive Director of Food Stash, about how food waste contributes to CO2 emissions and food insecurity worldwide. And we also learn how our own excess contributes to the 70 million tons of food wasted every year—ouch, sometimes the truth really does hurt. From farmers to groc...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Ash and Dirt This week’s spine-chilling epi is all treats and no tricks as we have a howl with comedy-horror film-maker Dan DeLuca. Producer, director and actor—this jack-o-lantern of all trades is a creator of 6 films, including “The Night Watchmen,” which lucky for us, is now streaming on Hulu and Amazon. He guides us through the funhouse of horror film making a...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Mexi-kin Spice Scooch past those big website boxes stacked up on your porch and tune-in to this week’s epi where we chat with Lore Burek and Beth Lawton of Made in ALX, where shopping small and local is the great find. Lore and Beth guide us through the process of how a farmer’s market idea expanded to an in-person and online reality while Gina delivers us a scrum...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Rum Rumaway Shiver me timbers! This week’s epi features lawyer turned author and pirate, Laura Sook Duncombe, whose work uncovers the bounty of female pirates history has long ignored. From Grace O’Malley, who terrorized shipping operations around the British Isles during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, to the earliest known female pirate, Queen Artemisia I of Hal...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: Hoby’s Delight Dr. Hoby Wedler, founder of Tasting in the Dark, takes us on a deep dive into sensory literacy on this week’s “super geeky” epi. An insightful, disarming, and passionate thinker, Hoby loves bringing people together to help them expand their minds and their palettes. He shares his experience of living with blindness and moves us with his passion and...

Get the featured cocktail recipe: For the Keeper Jump right into this buzzworthy epi, to learn some of Keith’s secrets on how to achieve that beautiful garden you’ve been dreaming while letting the bees do most of the work. Considering we are losing over 1/3 of our bee population, annually, your ever-blooming all-you-can eat buffet for these hardworking pollinators is a great way to help not just...