Lush Life

Our next guest was born for the role of brand ambassador with his love of the chat, his eagerness to teach, and his lively and generous spirit. I finally pinned down my friend Peter O’Connor, the European Brand Ambassador for the Irish Whiskey Roe and Co, and got him to start from the very beginning. Our Cocktail of the Week is the Roe & Co Peaches and Cream Ingredients 50ml Roe & Co 30ml...

When our guest today, David Wallwork, was naming his birch spirit - only Freya would do. Sustainably sourced and distilled from wild birch tree sap and named for the Norse Goddess of love, life & beauty! If anyone knows anything about the Norse Goddess Freya, they know she has the reputation of being the ‘party girl” of Asgard. She can’t help it if she’s the goddess of nature and fertility. Ou...

This episode is a little different from the previous ones. Last weekend I was in Edinburgh for Tales on Tour, three days of event, including lectures, bar takeovers, tastings and overall fun and festivities held all over Scotland's capital city. Instead of meeting just one person, you’ll meet a whole slew of people in the drinks industry who, while creating new brands, are also hoping to change th...

Our cocktail of the week the Banana Old Fashioned or Banana Republic is a yummy mix of rum and one of Colombia’s main exports - the banana. Apart from coffee and flowers, bananas are one of Colombia’s main exports. The Riascos family used to cultivate bananas before moving into ageing fine Colombian rum. This cocktail showcases the family’s heritage in a smooth, fruity classic. 60ml / 2oz La Hechi...

Two brothers from different parents, that’s what my guests call themselves. Friends from birth, born almost on the same day and with the same entrepreneurial spirit, Robin Clough and Max Davies-Gilbert join me today to talk Tequila Enemigo and how they are convincing the inconvincible that tequila is not just for shots any more. Our Cocktail of the Week is the Mineral 89: 50ml of Enemigo 89 175ml...

Our guest today hails from Heidelberg Germany originally and he knew, for sure, he could never sit at a desk all day. Good thing a friend asked him to join on a trip to Brazil that would change his life. Noah Dorian Matthies had the luck to be at the beginning of the El Barón movement to bring the cocktail scene to Cartagena. Our Cocktail of the Week is the Geóloga Galáctica. Ingredients: 300 ml o...

Julian and Nikol have combined the classic Espresso Martini and the Carajillo Cocktail to make their own Carajillo Epoca. You too can make at home as long as you have Aguardiente, the Colombian national spirit - like grappa with a slight anise flavour to it. It’s our Cocktail of the Week. Ingredients: 1½ oz of Aguardiente 1 oz espresso 1 oz Sugar cane syrup 1 oz Acacia 1 tablespoon coffee parchmen...

Plunked down in the UK from Hong Kong at the age of 17, wanting a little pocket money, our guest found work in a pub. Thank goodness, Starbucks was a little too slow to call him up or we wouldn’t be here today with Timothy Ching, the Global Champion of Beefeater‘s international MIXLDN competition 2017. The Cocktail of the week is “Please Sir, I want some more“ recipe : 40ml Beefeater 24 10ml Kamm...

It doesn’t always follow that spending summers in the Caribbean means you’re going to leave your job to launch a new rum. Though It did for our guest George Frost, whose passion for Anguilla is in every sip of his rum, The Duppy Share. He’s with us today to share how as the youngest brother of three his first love was hospitality... Our cocktail of the week is the The Duppy Share’s Ginger Daiquiri...

Younes Bahir, the head bartender at the luxurious Hotel Pashmina in Val Thorens, Europe’s highest ski resort in the Trois Vallée, France, may only be here for a season but his cocktail creations will live on. His cocktail of the week is the lemony Le Petit Marseillais. The recipe is as follows: 40ml Tanqueray No 10 40ml Lemon Juice 40ml Verbena syrup Infuse Verbena Leaves with boiling water and th...

Stroo Olofsson, and his wife Julia, created Blade Hair to be a different salon experience and they got that right. Where else can you get an Old-Fashioned while having a cut and color? Our Cocktail of the Week is The Name Of The Rose. 50ml of Four Roses Single Barrel Bourbon 25ml Luxardo Maraschino three dashes of Abbott's Bitters (Angostura will do in a pinch) an oversized ice cube made from fres...

Everything on Hammant Patel Villa’s menu has a tale, whether it emerges from his multicultural upbringing in the heart of this very neighborhood or Chinese history or his years working in business. These stories make each and every cocktail as rich in flavor as it is in individuality. From every sip emerges a multitude of images - how romantic is that! Our Cocktail of the Week is the Courtesan: Bl...

Two weeks of January being dry and cold were enough for me, so now we are heading south to Mexico via London for some very au currant Mezcal with our guest today, would-be philosopher turned distiller Ben Schroder. Our Cocktail of the Week is the Mezcal Left Hand: 50ml Pensador Mezcal 25ml Vermouth 25ml Campari 2 dashes chocolate bitters Combine all of the following in a mixing glass with ice. Sti...

Why would you want to substitute your Old-Fashioned for some fruity concoction in the middle of January, That was before our guest today, Ben Branson, followed a random google search to a book written in the 17th century called The Art of Distillation. The next day, Seedlip was born, but I’ll let him tell you the story. Our Cocktail of the Week is Ben’s Espresso MartiNO: 50 ml Seedlip Spice 94 50...

I met today’s guest  two years ago at a Mocktail Tasting Competition he was judging. I think at that time I was the only person in London who hadn’t heard of the famed Thomas Soden. From that day forward, Tom’s become what I call my spiritual guru, always available to advise me and answer my questions every step of the way. He’s had almost every job in the industry but it’s his enthusiasm for...

Brighton Gin may have started off as a small producer, but after winning UK's Best Gin at the People's Drink awards they will soon be taking the world by storm. Today we head down south to Brighton. A city that needed its own gin and our guest today, Kathy Caton, was just the woman for the job. The Mulled Gin as our cocktail of the week. One whole orange sliced 350ml Brighton Gin 700ml apple juice...

G’Vine Gin calls itself traditionally unconventional and that could also describe our guest today, Jamie Campbell,  Brand Ambassador for G’Vine Gin. It wasn’t just his half French/ half English upbringing that made Jamie Campbell almost predestined to work with G’Vine, one of few gins made from grapes The Martinez is our Cocktail of the Week.   50ml G'Vine Gin 15ml La Quintinye Vermouth...

Today our guest Danilo Tersigni will teach us what goes into a true Italian Negroni. He holds two positions: the Opening General Manager of Mr Fogg's in London as well as The Founder and Director of VII Hills gin with Filippo Previero, who I interviewed here last season. Of course our Cocktail of the Week has to be a Negroni, this time with all Italian ingredients. Danilo calls it the Negroni Bian...

He has seen Londoners transform from beer guzzlers to wine sippers at The Stafford Hotel. Even the wines we choose have changed from Old World to New. From the Stafford’s 320-year-old wine cellar, Gino Nardella is with us today to mull over his past 30 years and what the future of wine holds. Where you can hear me drinking next: Next time on Lush Life Podcast, we have another Italian who also coul...

Our guest today had a moment of doubt. After watching too many episodes of Location, Location, Location, he thought he would switch from making Rum Flips to doing Room Flips. Thank goodness for us, it only took a matter of months before Sam Carter saw the errors of his ways and settled back behind the bar. We would never have had the Laverstoke or all the other fantastic cocktails he has mixed as...

Looking down a microscope 24/7, you could get thirsty. Our guest today did, leading him to experiment more on martinis, then moss, stepping away from a life of botany into one filled with B52s, Bacardi, and bitters. Today, we sit down with Gregory J Buda, Director of Education & Training Manager of the Dead Rabbit, at Dickie’s Bar in London where he has been acting as Bar Consultant since thei...

Every episode of Lush Life Podcast is dear to me and I love meeting so many new people. It’s very rare for me to interview someone whom I have known for at least 15 years. Every Friday night, almost without fail, my family heads to the local inn for dinner. It’s a tradition when I come back home to visit. Although they have a series of dining rooms, we always sit in the bar. There is one reason fo...

His parents both did it and they never wanted our next guest to go anywhere near it. Like kids usually do, he didn't listen. Somehow Mikey Pendergast found himself on a fast track to becoming an archaeologist. That was until he stepped behind a bar. Now they can breathe more easily as he is now plotting a course of his own that doesn’t include shovels or picks. As Brand Ambassador of the East Lond...

Alexandre Le Grand could teach us all a lesson or two on brand awareness. Lesson 1: find a 300 year old recipe. Lesson 2: remake it for today’s palate, Lesson 3: Market the hell out of it. His first trick was copyrighting every aspect of Bénédictine - the recipe, the bottle, the label. He even created a Palais to go with his liqueur, producing it within a museum open to everyone to visit if they h...

He was always been one step ahead of the gin craze. Olivier Ward, our guest today, worked for the powerhouse Hendricks in its early days, wrote one of the first gin blogs, and ultimately founded the Home of Gin, aka the Gin Foundry . Gin Foundry has grown as fast as the gin industry! Just when you think everything that involves gin has been done, they come up with something exciting:  the inv...