The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias

On this week’s installment of The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias, we chat with the guys from De Nada Tequila – co-founders, Adam Millman and Danny Neeson, and master distiller, Cesar Vivanco. We discuss their partnership with Cesar and has family who own and operate Vivanco Family Distillery, a multi-generational operation that farms agave and produces Tequila. Their relationship is not only base...

On this week’s The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias, we are at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum discussing their new exhibit, “The First Settlement: Filipinos in Louisiana.” It tells the story of the first permanent Filipino settlement in the US, located in St. Bernard Parish, called St. Malo. We also discuss another important area, Manila Village, located on an island in Barataria Bay. We spe...

On this week’s The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias, we’re talking about Old Fashioned Week, taking place from October 14-23. It’s a benefit for the Southern Smoke Foundation, which provides emergency relief assistance and mental health support for the hospitality industry. We chat with Lynn House, National Spirits Specialist and Portfolio Mixologist for Heaven Hill, which owns Elijah Craig Bourbon...

On this week’s The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias, we welcome Dave Smith and Lance Winters of St. George Spirits. It’s a fine craft spirits distillery located in Alameda, California in the San Francisco Bay Area. They make some amazingly unique products. We discuss their story, their approach to making spirits, and have a lot of laughs along the way. As they say, “Distilling is our form of self-e...

On this week’s The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias, we bring you a fascinating conversation regarding the US wine and spirits market, particularly for foreign producers. It can be a difficult landscape to navigate, and it has transformed considerably in recent years due to the changing nature of information availability and how products are sold. These factors and other things we discuss certainly...

Here’s another show from Tales of the Cocktail 2022. This time around, a fascinating conversation where we chat with Matt Edgar and Cody Meltzer of Pineapple Audio. We talk about their Tales seminar, “The Sound of Hospitality.” It’s a conversation on how deeply sound affects our experience in hospitality spaces. We also discuss how establishments that get this concept and integrate it into their d...

We’re back after enjoying and participating in the 20th anniversary edition of Tales of the Cocktail as it returned to New Orleans in its full, in-person format! We taped a couple shows at the event (with more to come later) starting with this one – and it starts with a bang! We chat with Jeff “Beachbum” Berry and David Wondrich, two of the foremost cocktail historians on the planet and two great...

On this edition of The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias, the last before we take a couple weeks off for Tales of the Cocktail, we’re talking “making good drinks!” We’re joined by bartender extraordinaire, Abigail Gullo, over at the Loa Bar found in the International House Hotel in downtown New Orleans. Abigail shares with us three terrific original drinks she has created for their program that are...

On this week’s The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias we’re talking about whiskey and invasive green crabs! You may say, “what the?!?” But it’s a fascinating partnership between New Hampshire’s Tamworth Distilling and Mercantile and the University of New Hampshire’s Sea Grant program. The European green crab is a troubling invasive species in the region that is being exacerbated by climate change. In...

This time around on The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias, we’re over at the James Beard award-winning bar Cure in Uptown, New Orleans. Our guest is CureCo. co-founder, Neal Bodenheimer. We discuss their hospitality group and the growing number of spaces they operate. It’s a fun and interesting conversation that is a wide-ranging discussion on the industry. We also chat about Neal’s upcoming book, “...

On this week’s The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias, we discuss the return of live music to New Orleans and, specifically, to its iconic music district – Frenchmen Street. We welcome Patrick Williams of Midnight Revival, a new music venue and bar located in the Frenchmen Hotel, Duane Bartels of The Duane Bartels Band, and Andrew Portwood of Fox Pocket, a talent management and booking agency. We dis...

On this week’s The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias, we’ve got a whole lotta Sazerac going on! We’re at the Sazerac House talking Sazerac Cocktail Week and, of course, the Sazerac Cocktail itself! We welcome the Sazerac House’s Matt Ray to the show where we talk about the history of the drink, how to make it, next week’s events, and much more! We also kick-off our new offering – The NOLADrinks Show...

On this week’s The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias, we are pleased to bring you our traditional annual Tales of the Cocktail preview! We’re over at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum chatting with Eileen Wayner, CEO of the Tales of the Cocktail Foundation. We let you know about the specifics of what’s happening at this year’s Tales – their 20th anniversary! This includes the tastings, the semin...

On this week’s The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias, we chat with two leading New Orleans concierges. Our guests are Leah Hoyt, president of the New Orleans Concierge Association, and John Fitzpatrick, the organization’s social director. Leah is at the city’s Windsor Court Hotel and John is with the Westin New Orleans. We discuss their roles as concierges, what their job entails, and their thoughts...

On this week’s The NOLADrinks Show with Bryan Dias, we are talking all-things Bayou Boogaloo 2022! This terrific festival is returning to a full-scale production on Bayou St. John in Mid-City, New Orleans. We chat with festival director and president of Friends of Bayou St. John, Jared Zeller, the festival’s vendor manager, Tania Vidal, and one of the special food vendors, James Clesi of Clesi’s R...