The Curious Bartender Podcast

Jörg Meyer is the founder of Le Lion — Bar de Paris in Hamburg, one of the most consistently recognised cocktail bars in the world and the birthplace of the Gin Basil Smash, a drink he created in 2008 that now accounts for upwards of 25,000 pours a year at Le Lion alone and has become one of the few genuine modern classics produced outside London and New York. In this episode we go deep on the full origin story of that drink: the Whiskey Smash he fell for at Pegu Club in New York, the G'Vine recipe booklet with a basil garnish that caught his eye, the batch of basil he borrowed from a restaurant warehouse next door, and the blog post on July 10th 2008 that set the whole thing in motion. We talk about the strange position of being a committed classicist who loves two-ingredient drinks and measures success in restraint... and yet being best known for a vivid green herb cocktail that outsells everything else on the menu by a considerable margin. Along the way we get into the surprisingly technical world of basil sourcing (500 kilograms a year, with quality varying dramatically by country of origin), why over-muddling produces a drink that tastes of chlorophyll rather than basil, and what a gin fizz served at Bar High Five in Tokyo taught Jörg about the cost of too much lemon. We also get into the World's 50 Best Bars list in considerable depth — Jörg was on it for seven consecutive years, peaked at number 16 in 2013, and has since developed a very clear-eyed view of what the list actually is, how it can be gamed, and why being on it can sometimes be more damaging than helpful for small independent bars. Elsewhere we cover the Diageo World Class competition and what happened when Jörg started asking questions about how it was being run in Russia, the business mechanics of Le Lion right now (sales up 30% without a price increase), the Le Lion summer pass modelled on an 80s German youth leisure scheme, and a Midori cocktail that a Ueno San of High Five in Tokyo served him with barely concealed contempt. We end on Germany's bar scene — where it came from, where it is, and Jörg's honest and slightly uncomfortable answer to the question of what Germany uniquely contributes to global cocktail culture.📷 Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tristanstephenson/📚 I've written quite a few books on spirits and cocktails - https://www.thecuriousbartender.com/

This week we're filming on location at Wild Turkey in Lawrenceburg, sitting in the old station house with Bruce Russell — third-generation whiskey maker and associate blender, grandson and son of the two living legends whose names hang over the place: Jimmy Russell, the longest-tenured master distiller of any spirit, and his son Eddie. Bruce was headed for a career in robotics until a summer giving distillery tours, and one quietly devastating afternoon when his introverted father walked his tour and told him he didn't know much of anything, redirected the whole course of his life. We get into what it means to carry a name like Russell, the freedom in being told you'll never be Jimmy or Eddie so you'd better be yourself, and the uncanny way personality and palate skip a generation. We discover Jimmy's handwritten 1950s notebooks and the by-hand, by-feel craft that's quietly vanishing, chase the elusive "Wild Turkey Funk" of vintage bourbon and ask whether it can ever be made again. We don't dodge the state of the market — the glut, the overproduction, the correction coming around 2029-30, and why the big houses ride out storms that sink smaller players. There's plenty for the nerds: angel's share losses of 75 to 90 percent on the oldest barrels, the freakish top floors at Camp Nelson where the highest-proof whiskey somehow tastes the best, and how a single recipe becomes Jimmy whiskey or Eddie whiskey depending only on the warehouse. We trace the rise of rye, the difference between Wild Turkey's stewardship and the offence of Russell's Reserve, and the tight, almost familial culture binding the Kentucky distilling families. Along the way we taste through some genuinely rare liquid: Bruce's first solo project - Austin Nichols Gold Foil 16 Year Old - a sneak peek of Russell's 13 made for Eddie's 45th anniversary, then onto the near-mythical Russell's 1998, and hear how Generations brought all three Russells together for what turned out to be the last whiskey Jimmy actively worked on. We finish on a Wild Turkey that travelled to Japan, took on a second life at Chichibu, and came back tasting like nothing any of us expected.

Simon Ford is the co-founder of The 86 Co. and creator of Ford's Gin, and the man widely credited as the first brand ambassador the modern spirits industry ever produced (though he's not so sure about that). In this episode, we trace his career from a London wine shop job secured despite admitting he didn't actually like wine, through his years at Ideal Brands working on Absolut alongside Nick Blacknell, Dick Bradsell and Wayne Collins, to opening the celebrated Koba bar in Brighton and the call that sent him off to launch Plymouth Gin around the world.
We follow Simon through his years as Plymouth's North America ambassador, the move to New York in 2006 at the height of the craft cocktail renaissance, and the senior Pernod Ricard directorship he turned down to build something of his own. We dig deep into the founding of The 86 Co. in 2012 alongside Employees Only's Jason Kosmas and Dushan Zaric — the survey of 149 bartenders that shaped Ford's Gin, the 90-plus formula iterations before Simon was satisfied, the moment Dale DeGroff invested on the spot after tasting it at the distillery, and the blind taste test at Pegu Club where Audrey Saunders put Ford's up against 14 other gins and Simon picked it out.
We cover the famously oversubscribed Tales of the Cocktail launch party in 2013 (which I was at), the 2019 acquisition by Brown-Forman — including the full story of how it came together and the day Simon fell fully clothed into a pond on the Louisville campus — and the unvarnished realities of scaling a spirit brand from nothing. The episode closes with Simon's current projects: a campaign to revive sloe gin, a new Ford's innovation in development at Thames Distillers, and the annual Ford's Gin party at Tales of the Cocktail.

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Valentine Warner is a chef, food writer and broadcaster who trained as a portrait painter before swapping the brush for the spoon in the kitchens of Alastair Little. He went on to make his name on BBC2 with What to Eat Now and a run of further series, and is co-founder of the Moorland Spirit Company, the Northumberland distillery behind Hepple Gin, as well as curator of the immersive food-and-craft retreat series Kitchen in the Wild.
We talk cider as Britain's lost wine, the chef's view of saké, and the allure of martinis. We dig into a Dorset childhood spent dividing the world into edible and inedible — including the eating of his sister's paints — the lessons of Alastair Little's kitchen, and why he insists he isn't a forager. On Hepple we get the founder's view on Douglas fir, supercritical CO2 extraction, why no one else was using green juniper berries, and what a properly built martini actually requires. We then turn to the closing of the Norwegian chapter and what comes next for Kitchen in the Wild, a portrait of Nick Strangeway, the state of British hospitality, and the in-progress Sketchbook Cookbook.

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Julio Bermejo is the owner of Tommy's Mexican Restaurant in San Francisco, which is the bar credited by the Wall Street Journal as "the epicentre of tequila in the United States" and the place where the Tommy's Margarita was created in the 90's. In this episode we trace his journey from the family's Yucatecan roots and the early days of a restaurant that didn't even hold a liquor licence until 1972, through his decision in the mid-1980s to go exclusively 100% agave on the well — years before the mainstream caught up — and into the creation of the Blue Agave Club, now with over 7,000 members worldwide. We get into the philosophy behind the Tommy's Margarita itself: why agave syrup replaced triple sec, and how Dre Masso, Henry Besant and others carried the drink into bars globally before it became the first venue-specific cocktail ever added to the IBA Official list. Julio also shares what his early distillery trips taught him, from meetings with Guillermo Romo de la Peña at Herradura, Don Felipe Camarena at Tapatio and Fernando Gonzales at Siete Leguas, to the lesson about never putting your opinions in a tequila menu — as well as his principled stance on regulation and safety, the Highland versus Valley divide, what agave boom-and-bust cycles reveal about the industry, and the persistent problem of contracted tequilas and shifting NOM numbers. We also talk about Tommy's post-pandemic reality, what his mother Elmy — now 92 — still brings to the place, and the 60 pop-ups in 20-plus countries he did to mark the restaurant's 60th anniversary.🍋‍🟩 Fever-Tree - For the very best mixers that taste pretty damn good even by themselves☕ Algebra Drinks - The world's best coffee liqueur (partly because it's low in sugar - get 15% off at http://www.algebradrinks.com with the code CURIOUS15🌾 Belvedere Vodka - Organic vodka, with substance, made from Polish rye and absolutely no additives.🍷 Denver & Liely - The best glassware on the planet - get 15% off at http://www.denverandliely.com with the code CURIOUS15