The Philip Duff Show

I sat down with St. John Frizell, who founded Fort Defiance bar in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighbourhood back in 2009, and brought Gage & Tollner, long the most vaunted fine-dining restaurant in Brooklyn since it opened in 1879, back to life in 2021 (yep, 2021!) after it lay dormant and closed for almost two decades. I met St. John when he taught a seminar I attended on the subject of playboy...

The champ is here!  It was a delight chatting to Matt Pietrek, the Rumwonk himself; Matt's responsible for some of the deepest and most illuminating dives into rum history in recent years on what is now his Substack (link below). His magnum opus, "Modern Caribbean Rum", which he wrote, photographed and self-published together with his wife Carrie Smith, just won "Best New Book...

The eagle-eyed among you will see I didn't post any episodes in July, and that's because I was based in Lisbon, but also flying around Europe like a demon, then getting back to the US a day or two before Tales, and then shooting down to Alabama to help my step-daughter move into college.  So this is the catch-up! Lisbon! London! Italy! Amsterdam! New York! New Orleans (and a bit of bitch...

We both - barely - just survived Tales 2023, and as he lives in Sydney we don't get to sit down to share a drink often, so on his NY stopover I grabbed Sam Bygrave, founder of independent news hub for the Australian bar industry Boothby Drinks and formerly one of the longest serving editors of Australian Bartender Magazine. (In fact, Sam was my editor when I wrote a column for AB). Shout-out...

Ever wondered about the nitty-gritty of running a craft spirits company? Join us in this eye-opening episode as we chat with John and Lucky, co-founders of January Spirits, who share their inspiring journey from working together in different bars and restaurants to creating their very own spirit brand. You'll learn about crafting unique liqueurs, navigating complex US legislation, and their m...

Are you ready to embark on an incredible journey through the world of spirits, sustainability, and personal growth? Join us for a captivating conversation with Stephanie Jordan Balmforth, co-founder of Avallen Calvados, as we explore her diverse background, passions, and the making of a sustainable spirits brand. Over a delightful Dempsey cocktail, Stephanie shares her upbringing in London as the...

This was so much fun we forget we were recording!  After fuelling up a starving Sother with one of Will Wyatt's preposterously good Electric Burritos, Sother kicks off by spilling the tea on Trap Cocktails, Maxwell Britten, and  his firm's soon-to-open African diaspora restaurant, Ubuntu.  We discuss the joys of vegan food both at the DIG fast-casual chain and at Eleven Madison Park, Sot...

Ever wondered how alcohol can actually be beneficial in fostering creativity, bonding, and even lie detection? Join our intriguing conversation with award-winning Sinologist and philosophy professor Dr. Edward Slingerland, as we discuss his recent captivating book, "Drunk", and shed light on the often-misunderstood spirits industry. Together, we dive into the role of alcohol in society,...

How did growing up in an Italian ice cream shop lead to owning the world's best bar? Join us as we chat with Giacomo Giannotti about his incredible journey from humble beginnings to achieving international acclaim with his Barcelona-based bar, Paradiso, current #1 on the World's 50 Best Bars list. Listen in as we explore the lessons he learned along the way, how his experiences in London...

This one's for the industry people! I first came across Chris on LinkedIn, where he posts short, GOLD pieces of advice almost every day for small brands looking to grow and scale sustainably in bars and restaurants, building on his decades-long experience of doing just that across Europe, from his native Italy to the Czech Republic, where he now lives. Over a Pilsner  Urquell or two we covere...

I nabbed Julio Bermejo while he was in town for the launch of Campari's new luxury (and tasty) tequila, named Mayenda, and Campari generously let us borrow one of their conference rooms* loftily overlooking New York's Bryant Park from the 19th floor, to record an episode. Equipped with a dram or two of tequila, we covered vital topics, including:  - Why "fresh" is like "pr...

The King is here! Me and Dale de Groff taste the delicious new De Groff Amaro and De Groff Aperitivo he's made with Ted Breaux (who won't let Dale say what's in them), we talk about history's first-ever cocktail party with "gin and bitters", our biggest ever failings as bartenders and managers, why Freddy Heineken bought several former horse stables around Amsterdam,...

Whoa this was great! Who knew Erick was a journalism graduate? I always assumed bartending for him was a work placement after jail (;-)! He made his bones in mega legit Cali bars like Rickhouse in San Francisco (where I met him) then relocated to San Diego and opened his own places, Polite Provisions (T-shirt slogan: "Polite As Fuck") and the award-winning Raised by Wolves.  Along the wa...

Agave all day! (Although we were drinking rye whiskey, as it goes).  Had a blast sitting down with the one and only Salvador "Chava" Periban, a Michoacan friend, combustion engineer, former head distiller, agave devotee (& expert), Mexico City resident and another of my fellow judges at the ADI awards.  You may have heard him on The Speakeasy or Agave Road Trip podcasts but trust me,...

Managed to carve out some time old friend, bar supremo, longtime West Coaster, and dude who sends out thousands of cocktail kits every month with Shaker & Spoon,  Danny Ronen!  We were both sequestered in a hotel in ritzy Tiburon, California, judging  the American Distilling Institute's Craft Spirits Awards, so we took a break from judging spirits to......sit down and drink some and fix t...

Well THIS really was a Springsteen-in-his-prime length episode, a whopping three-and-a-half hour opus chez Sachs where we drink a selection of cocktails from the stunning new Wanderlust menu at London's Pine Bar in the Biltmore Mayfair hotel, confirm that both Khoosh and Dr. Hostetter's bitters  taste delish with champagne or genever, drink some genever that - shock! horror! - isn't...

This is a MAMMOTH episode with the legendary co-founder of the Employees Only bar empire, co-founder of The 86 Co (famous for Ford's Gin and recently acquired by Brown Forman), author of "Speakeasy" and certified good time, Dushan Zaric, a friend of mine for going on twenty years now. It's so hilariously amateurishly edited (we did two recording sessions) that after about an ho...

What a few weeks! Time to talk our way through what's been happening.  Shitty Serena Williams ad for Superbowl for Remy Martin? Check! Controversy about the technical files for Irish single pot still whiskey? cHECK! Jack Daniels? Ago Perrone? Salvatore Calabrese? Simon Ford? Matsuhisa Nobu? Bob de Niro?  Check, check, check, check?.  Wild times  - ENJOY THE LISTEN!  ( Get in touch with Duff!...

 Here I cover the history and production techniques of sake and shochu at a 101 (basic) level, and then Kenta Goto of the acclaimed New York bars Bar Goto and Bar Goto Niban takes over and unveils a whole new template for creating cocktails using sake or shochu as the base, as opposed to whisky or gin. We tried to make this seminar podcast-friendly but the visuals mean that watching this with vide...

David Gluckman is a drinks industry legend, and he  reeaalllly doesn't like the concept of the new non-alcoholic "spirits". This from the man who invented Baileys Irish cream liqueur, Tanqueray TEN gin, The Singleton whisky, and many more liquor brands. (You can read, watch and listen all about it, with links to old ads, videos and music jingles, by buying his book "That Will N...

Back with a bang after a few months off, I thought I'd do a roundup of all the news of 2022: world news, bar & cocktail news, spirits business news and what I was up to myself. Damn thing ran to almost two hours and I still forgot to mention that Netflix show "Drink Masters". Get yourself a large beverage to hand, make sure you're sitting comfortably and hit play... ( Get i...

There's been a lot of debate recently as to whether gin (which was definitely first created in England) descended from Dutch genever - or from somewhere else. In this seminar I add a lot of information only available from Dutch-language sources, and try to explain why, although gin didn't have a single ancestor from a single country, the most influential distillate that led to the creati...

I sat down last week with my old friend Oron Lerner  in Tel Aviv , where he's beverage director for the World's 50 Best Bars-listed Imperial Craft bar, as well as their other excellent outlets La Otra and Bushwick. Over a few martinis and quite a bit of genever, we chat about life in a war zone, perceived happiness, the one kind of diversity people don't want to get behind and why y...

I had huge fun taping this epic two-hour episode with the hilarious noted drinks writer and music fiend Tony Sachs, wherein we drink Silver Bullet cocktails with hundred-year-old kummel, Improved Holland Gin Cock-tails with hundred-year-old angostura bitters, ponder if you should lisp when you say Jerez, what a Katy Perry cocktail would taste like and have a celebrity basketball players' tequ...

FINALLY an episode that's just me hanging out with someone, slurping down drinks and shooting the shit! Me and Dan solve all the world's problems, from his troubling lack of Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards to how everyone can crash at my place in Portugal this summer, to what it was like to fly maskless on a plane, how Ray Charles loved genever and how Ted Haigh got it onscreen, al...