Drinks At Work with Sam Bygrave

I’m talking to Jordan Bushell, the global brand ambassador for Hennessy — perhaps you’ve heard of this plucky, young upstart cognac brand that has only been around for — oh, 259 years? Hennessy of course is a well-known brand, one that for many people is synonymous with cognac, and for some people that’s all they know of the spirit. Obviously I think I know a fair bit more about cognac than that,...

Gin Palace owner Ben Luzz talks about the recent renovations of the bar, the wear and tear that comes with running a bar for almost 30 years. Ben also talks about becoming the custodian custodian of Gin Palace after the passing of Vernon Chalker, and how he keeps a balance between preserving the bar’s legacy and embracing the future. Ben also talks about adding Bijou and Black Kite Commune to his...

In this episode I’m talking to the three owners of Ramblin’ Rascal Tavern — Sebastian Cosmo Soto, Charlie Lehmann, and Dardan Shervashidze. When they opened the bar in 2014, they’d come from the best training school for new bar owners at that time: The Baxter Inn. They opened the bar with around $350,000 cobbled together between the three of them and an investor, which they talk about in this epis...

We are living in some interesting times for hospitality, with what seems like a conflicting narrative out there at the moment. On the one hand, it seems like every week there’s a notable venue closing. On the other hand, there's been a bar opening boom in the last few months.

The Rooster Rojo Rumble is looking for six bartenders to fly to Sydney — and one to Greece. Abbie Weir is a memorable, compelling human. The agave specialist for Amber Beverages Australia is a big personality in an industry where there that’s a prerequisite. “This industry is all about personality,” Abbie says in this week’s episode of Drinks At Work. “A bartender can make or break your experience...

I’ve got a different episode of Drinks At Work this week — I’m calling it Drinks At Work — The List. It’s about how Jay Gray’s Singapore bar, Sago House, got onto the World’s 50 Best Bars list in 2023. It’s a bit of a different format for Drinks At Work, one I’m hoping to roll out from time to time; it’s more of a narrative piece than the conversational episodes that I usually make on Drinks At Wo...

I met Stu at the Four Pillars Lab on Crown Street in Surry Hills to chat about his experience with Four Pillars, how and why spirits competitions like this new one from the RAS matter, the state of the Australian distilled spirits industry right now, storytelling, and whether, knowing just how many distilleries are out there right now, he would start Four Pillars today if it didn’t exist. If you’v...

The Drink of the Year Awards is my favourite event of the Boothby events we do each year, and it’ll be back again in November 2024 for the third year. For this episode of Drinks At Work, however, I’m talking to the bartender behind the drink that took the number one spot on the top 50 last year. That is of course Samuel Thornhill, he’s the head bartender at Melbourne cocktail bar Byrdi, and we tal...

It’s a new year, which means that the next instalment of World Class Australia is about to get underway. I think it’s fair to call it the most influential cocktail competition going around at the moment, and the experience of entering, and potentially make the Top 100, can help grow one’s career behind the bar and in hospitality.  So I’m talking today to Diageo Trade Advocacy Manager and Australia...

If the new bar opening boom of late 2023 is anything to go by, 2024 is going to be a very interesting year for the bar and drinks world. And so for the first episode for Drinks At Work in 2024, I wanted to discuss some of the trends that came out of 2023 and what we might see in the year ahead, and to do that I spoke to the ever thoughtful and creative Ross Blainey. Ross is the brand ambassador an...

My guest on this episode is Garth Foster. For the last 15 years garth has worked at luxury drinks group Moet Hennessy, in both brand ambassador and business development on a range of brands, among them Ardbeg, Belvedere vodka and Hennessy. But he recently left Moet Hennessy to launch a new Australian rum brand with his longtime friend David Fesq. They’re a company of two, and Red Mill Rum Co. is t...

Welcome to Drinks At Work from Boothby with Sam Bygrave, that is me. We’ve had some time off the podcast over the last month or so, as we were gearing up for the second annual Boothby Drink of the Year Awards — what a great night that was. The number one drink on the night was from Sam Thornhill at Byrdi in Melbourne with his drink Bad Apple, Rob Libecans took out the Bartender of the Year title —...

Have you ever thought about starting your own liquor brand? Opening your own distillery? My guest on this episode is award-winning bartender Tim Laferla, and he has done just that. It’s called Damaged Goods Distilling Co., and in this interview we talk about his start in Perth bars like Mechanics Institute, how his time working in London for Michelin chefs and in zero waste venues shaped his think...

Simon McGoram is the regional sales manager for Atom Brands, but he’s also been a brand ambassador, a bar owner, once upon a time he was named NZ’s bartender of the year, and he has been a writer, working for a number of years at Australian Bartender magazine as editor and then later, when I was there, as the drinks editor. In this episode, we talk about unnamed whiskies, independent bottlings and...

This episode is a recording of a panel chat I had up in Brisbane as part of Paramount Liquor’s Future Proof event — I spoke about the future of the Brisbane bar scene, what it needs, and where it’s going, with three of the city’s finest: Bonnie Shearston, who earlier this year opened the excellent vinyl bar, Ruby, My Dear, and has owned and operated a nunber of award-winning Brisbane-based venues...

Last weekend we held the first Boothby Best bars Victoria awards, and a good times party for 130 of the industry’s best and brightest bar owners and bartenders. It was at The Lincoln, and we handed out a few awards on the night as well as counting down the top 50 bars in Victoria. Caretaker’s Cottage were on hand to mix the drinks for the night with a takeover — it was incredible, an amazing turno...

I hosted a panel talk — one of the most interesting ones I’ve been involved with — for Proof & Company during Sydney Bar Week, called Casa de Agave and I’ve got the recording of that talk for you on this episode of Drinks At Work. we had some big agave brains on the panel — founder of Agave Cartel and the group bars guy for Sydney hospitality group, Solotel, Reece Griffiths; co-founder of the...

This episode is a recording of an interesting one on one chat I had up in Brisbane last month for Paramount Liquor’s Future Proof event — I spoke with bartender and owner of the soon to open Sydney bar, The Waratah, Evan Stroeve. Evan’s a guy with a great resume, he’s worked at Shady Pines Saloon and The Baxter Inn, ran the show at the much-missed Bulletin Place, and was on the opening crew at Syd...

My guest on this episode of Drinks At Work is Iain McPherson. He’s the owner and bartender behind Edinburgh bars Panda & Sons and Nauticus, and he’s long had a passion for the cold: he’s the guy who developed the switching technique, which employs advanced freezers to enhance the flavour of liquors, and souspression, another freezing technique to help create new drinks.

I’m talking to one of my favourite Australian bartenders in this episode, it’s James Connolly. He’s a veteran of the Perth bartending scene, one of the nicest guys in the business, and recently he opened the very bar of his own, Bertie in Bassendean in Perth. He’s one of a growing number of bartenders turned owners who have decided to open places a little further from the CBD, so he talks a bit ab...

Earlier in August, Sam Bygrave hosted a panel talk with Daisy Tulley and Wade Tiller titled Future Proof Your Brand. Daisy Tulley is the general manager of Sydney’s Mucho Group, whose bars include The Cliff Dive, Tio’s, Bar Planet, and World’s 50 Best Bar, Cantina OK!. The Mucho Group also has their own brand of seltzer which they sell under the Cantina OK! brand, which made for some good back and...

This week I’m talking to the Maidenii vermouth and Marionette Liqueurs founder, Shaun Byrne, about his career but also about the Australian Distilled Spirits Awards, of which he is the new head judge. The ADSA is the biggest spirits judging competition in Australia, and I think it’s the most reputable — they have a mix of bartenders, writers, retail buyers, and distillery industry folks on their m...

Hamish Smith is the editor of CLASS Magazine in the UK, the bars editor fro Drinks International, and an academy chair for The World’s 50 best Bars. He’s also the creator and organiser behind Drinks International’s Bar World 100 list — so he knows a thing or two about bar awards and lists. And that forms a large part of our chat this episode. I ask Hamish about whether the lists are good for the i...

On this ***bonus*** episode we're taking a tour of new Sydney bar, Tucano's Lounge, to find out what we should expect when the bar — from the team behind last year's About Time popup — opens. I'm talking to Steve Davis, co-owner of Tucano's Lounge and Sydney bar industry veteran about how they basically built the bar themselves, how they're steering their modern tropical tiki drinks away from an o...

Something a little different to the usual on this episode: we're talking to award-winning bartender Anneliese Grazioli and breaking a bit of news — she’s got a new bar on the way, called Bar Kokomo, so we’re going to find out what to expect when it opens in mid-to-late September. Anneliese has built quite the career for herself up in Darwin, she worked for a long time for David and Kelly Robinson,...