Drinks Adventures - Wine, beer, whisky, gin & more with James Atkinson

Banks and Bloom Distillery + Lab is a West Australian company founded by biochemist Elaine Darby and winemaker Trent Carroll. Trent’s name might be familiar to some of you from his earlier AFL career at Fremantle and West Coast. But it was Elaine’s background that caught my eye when a media release came through recently announcing that Banks and Bloom Ice Vodka had been awarded Doubled Gold in the...

There’s been a groundswell of new Irish whiskey brands in recent years, which we explored in late 2022 in a special episode supported by the Irish Whiskey Association. Royal Oak Distillery predates many of the newcomers. It was founded in 2012 by the late Augusto Reina of Illva Saronno, the Italian company that owns renowned liqueur brands Disaronno and Tia Maria. Located on an 18th century estate...

Hawke’s Brewing was founded by advertising creatives Nathan Lennon and David Gibson, together with former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, in 2017. Bob Hawke passed away in 2019 but his legacy lives on at Hawke’s Brewing through a unique arrangement that diverts his royalty share in the business to Landcare Australia, the environmental charity he founded in 1989. We’ll talk about that later on...

Season 16 of Drinks Adventures starts this week! Here's a sneak preview of some of the outstanding episodes coming up featuring all your favourite beverage categories: Wine, whisky, beer, gin, vodka and more.

Welcome to another edition of the news on Drinks Adventures, as we get Season 16 of the show underway. Once again, we’re catching up on the news from the last couple of months. ‘Insolvency armageddon’ hits drinks industry; Mighty Craft acknowledges difficult market; Hahn bets big on Ultra Low Carb beer; Fever-Tree overhauls Australian operations; and Brown Brothers launches Extended Lees Patricia...

Sydney’s Akasha Brewing Company was founded by former IT professional and passionate homebrewer Dave Padden in 2015. It has quietly grown into one of the inner west’s larger independent breweries, having quickly developed a reputation for high quality, hop-driven beer styles.  The year 2022 was pivotal for Akasha. The company undertook a $1.7 million equity crowdfunding raise that supported its di...

After almost five years and coming up to 200 episodes, perhaps it’s time for you to hear a little bit more about me, how I started Drinks Adventures, and where it might be headed. Recently Andrew Graham from Kaddy – the wholesale beverage marketplace – asked to interview me for its industry news pages, Kaddy Community. To which I said, ‘sure! But if we’re going to do it, we may as well record the...

Kentucky-based Michter’s Distillery was named World's Most Admired American Whiskey and second Most Admired Whisky overall by Drinks International in 2022. We'll find out the story behind its incredible trajectory from master distiller, Dan McKee, in this interview produced in partnership with Michter's. Born and raised in Indiana, Dan McKee moved to Kentucky to pursue his dream of making whiskey,...

Jota Tanaka has worked for Kirin Brewery Company for 34 years, leading its whisky business as master blender since 2017. He’s had a really interesting career path through the Kirin business to arrive at his current role, including stints in winemaking, wine marketing and leading product development for Four Roses Distillery in Kentucky. We’ll get into some of that in this interview with Jota, who...

James France is a 30-year veteran of the spirits industry in both Australia and abroad. In 2008 he founded the Sydney-based distribution business Vanguard Luxury Brands with the objective of bringing the best brands to the best bars, liquor stores, restaurants and hotels across Australia. He ultimately sold Vanguard in 2019 to Lion, which simultaneously acquired the biggest brand on Vanguard’s ros...

The news returns to the Drinks Adventures podcast for the first time since 2021! This first edition for 2023 is using the term ‘news’ a little loosely, as I’m catching you up on some of the stories that have been on my radar since the beginning of the year: Lark dismisses buyout talk; and Sullivans Cove speculation; Pernod Ricard's first new brand in 20+ years; Indie bottler Boutique-y returns to...

Steve Roennfeldt, better known as Steve the Bartender, has been sharing easy-to-follow cocktail videos on YouTube since 2017. He’s based in Adelaide, South Australia, but he’s built a global community of cocktail enthusiasts. As at the present moment Steve has nearly 700,000 subscribers, which means he’s the country’s leading cocktail Youtuber and one of the top cocktail-related accounts globally....

Melbourne’s Starward Whisky has released smaller batch experimental products ever since the very early days. And some of these, like the Ginger Beer Cask that we explored in depth with founder David Vitale in Season 13, have gone onto bigger things. In 2020, the company created the Small Batch Experimental Series as a home for its smaller one-off releases that haven’t reached the scale required fo...

Can you imagine buying what was supposed to be the exact same product – any product – and having it be different every time? And in some cases, that the product you purchased was outright faulty. It wasn’t fit for purpose. This is not an acceptable scenario in any category of consumer goods. But it’s exactly what was happening in the Australian wine industry 20 years ago, and through no fault of o...

Maximilian Riedel is the 11th generation CEO of Austrian glassware company Riedel. The company was founded in 1756 and according to Maximilian it is currently facing some of the biggest challenges in its 267-year history. There’s been the covid pandemic obviously, but more recently, the war in Ukraine, which is hugely concerning for an energy intensive manufacturing business such as Riedel, given...

Tarac is the largest distiller of grape spirit in Australia, supplying high quality neutral alcohol and brandy spirit for use in fortified wines since 1930. And, as the craft spirits industry has taken off over the last decade, Tarac has increasingly been supplying distillers with the base alcohol to create products including gin and vodka. Now, in a milestone move for the company, it has turned i...

F1 questions were strictly off limits in this week's interview with Daniel Ricciardo about his DR3 collaboration with St Hugo Wines. Instead, I put some of those questions to James Baldwin from leading Australian F1 podcast, Lakeside Drive. James is a wine guy himself, so he gives me his thoughts on the DR3 partnership and Daniel’s F1 prospects in this bonus episode of Drinks Adventures. You can a...

He’s best known as an eight-time Formula 1 Grand Prix winner, but Daniel Ricciardo is now forging a reputation for his DR3 wines, produced in partnership with Australia’s St Hugo. After a strong critical reception and encouraging sales for the debut vintages, the project continues to evolve with the third consecutive release of Barossa Shiraz and Coonawarra Cabernet, this time from the celebrated...

Collaboration between different drinks producers is vast these days, and in this episode you’re going to hear about one of the more interesting projects. Lark Distillery has just released Fresh IPA Cask, a single malt Tasmanian whisky finished in casks that have previously held Fresh IPA brewed by New Zealand’s Garage Project. How do you maintain the freshness and vibrancy of the Fresh IPA beers a...

We’ve talked a lot on this podcast about how peoples’ drinking repertoires are expanding. We’re much more open to experiencing a wider range of quality beverages from different cultures that suit different occasions. This is something that Australia’s largest drinks retailer, Endeavour Group, is keenly aware of. The company has recently doubled the range of Asian beverages in its Dan Murphy’s and...

Dr Bill Lumsden is the head of distilling, whisky creation and whisky stocks at Glenmorangie and Ardbeg distilleries. The always entertaining Bill joins us this episode as we delve into some of his recent innovations with distilling and maturation in a rapid fire chat recorded while he was in Sydney, late in 2022. You’ll hear about his experiments with a raft of different wood types; a whisky made...

Welcome back to the Drinks Adventures podcast for 2023. If you’ve been with me on the show since the beginning you’ll recall a brilliant chat back in Season One with winemaker and brewer, Janice McDonald, who at that time was chief winemaker at Howard Park in Margaret River. Janice recently joined her partner Stuart Pym at his boutique winery Flowstone, and they’re with us this episode as we hear...

Coming up in the new season of Drinks Adventures, we'll meet Formula 1 star turned wine entrepreneur Daniel Ricciardo. Listen in for some of the other highlights you can expect as the show returns for another massive year in 2023.

Islay’s famous Laphroaig single malt Scotch whisky distillery has featured prominently already in this season of Drinks Adventures. Last episode, we heard how Mighty Craft’s head of distilling operations, George Campbell, got his start in the Scotch whisky industry as a tour guide at Laphroaig. And a few more episodes back we met veteran Scotch distiller John McDougall, who was Laphroaig’s distill...

Mighty Craft is an ASX-listed craft drinks company with investments in several distilling brands that have featured previously on this podcast: Hidden Lake Whisky, 78 Degrees and Seven Seasons Spirits. In this episode, we meet Mighty Craft’s head of distilling operations, George Campbell, who joined the business in mid-2021, bringing with him a strong pedigree from the Scotch whisky industry. Geor...