Living Proof: Conversations for Bartenders

Giannis Miliotis is a brilliant bartender at Oz Cocktail Bar on the Greek island of Chios. Chios also happens to be where Mastica - the plant which produces the resin that goes in to making Mastiha Liqueur - originates from. Giannis takes us through a bit of Mastica history, how he uses the liqueur in cocktails, and we hit him with the Free Pour 5!

Ross Blainey is William Grant & Sons’ The Balvenie Brand Ambassador for Australia and New Zealand. His job, as he puts it, is to bring the stories from the 126-year-old Speyside Scotch Whisky distillery to those who haven’t been able to get there. Some of those tales are also behind the company’s new ‘The Balvenie Stories’ range of whiskys.

Ross’ first encounter with The Balvenie’s Single Malts was as a teenager, when he was tasked with building the whisky range at the Dufftown pub where he was working. He grew the bar’s range of single malts from less than 10 to almost 200, yet found that he kept coming back to The Balvenie 12 DoubleWood as his go-to dram.

Jim Meehan owns Please Don’t Tell, a hidden high-end cocktail bar in New York that has become something of an institution. He's also an accomplished author - many of you would be familiar with his work in the PDT Cocktail Book and Meehan's Bartender Manual, winner of the 2018 James Beard Foundation Cookbook Award in "Beverage" category.

David Wondrich is the world's pre-eminent drinks historian. After beginning his career as an academic - he has a PhD in Comparative Literature - Dave decided to combine his appetite for writing and history with his passion for well-made drinks. So, he began tracing the stories behind many of the cocktails we enjoy to this day and, in doing so, he built an awareness and community that helped drive the drinks renaissance of this century.

Next up in our ‘best-of’ series of podcasts is our chat with Philip Duff.

Philip has been a successful drinks consultant, educator, producer, writer, judge and venue owner. The Irishman has done it all since establishing his consultancy, Liquid Solutions, 20 years ago: He opened the Netherland's first Speakeasy – door 74 – mentored some of the world's best bartenders (including Marcus!) and at the time of recording, he was the Director of Education at Tales of the Cocktail.

For the next month, we’re bringing back some of our greatest hits as part of our ‘best-of’ podcast series. You’ll be hearing four of our most popular conversations with cocktail royalty. The first of those is this chat with ‘King Cocktail’, Dale DeGroff.

Dale is a bartender, author and “one of the world’s foremost cocktail experts” according to in the New York Times. We were lucky enough to get him on the other end of the phone when he was in Australia in late 2018, to chat about the cocktail industry he’s a part of today versus the one in which he began his career in the 1970s, plus plenty of stories in between.

Kayla Grigoriou is a Bar Manager at Bar Torino in Adelaide who recently made the Top 20 Australian bartenders at this year’s Diageo World Class competition.

Kayla takes us through the cocktail that helped her make the cut, the elements of the next phase of competition that she was preparing for at the time of recording, the Free Pour Five and more.

Wes Heddles and Sacha La Forgia both own and run different award-winning South Australian distilleries. Wes is one of two men who co-founded Prohibition Liquor, a small-batch gin producer, and Sacha is a former winemaker who now heads up Adelaide Hills Distillery.

Robin Wolf is a career bartender and the winner of the Tales of the Cocktail 2019 Official Cocktail Competition. Her liquid creation, titled Night Gardens, riffed off of the competition themes - Highball and 'Cultivate' - to settle on a Jasmine Tea number that is simple and refreshing.

Robin herself is a well-rounded and accomplished hospitality professional who has a background as a wine sommelier. She currently runs the bar program at The Hatch Rotisserie & Bar in Paso Robles, California, as well as makes her own range of bitters for her company SLO Bitter Co.

In Marcus' absence this week, we're throwing back to an earlier chat with Japanese Master Bartender Hidetsugu Ueno. Owner of the world renowned Bar High Five in Tokyo, Ueno is the most revered of anyone behind a bar in Japan, which is astounding when you consider the fact he doesn't even drink.

We asked about the gruelling master & apprentice style of bar tutelage that's ever present in Japan, his meticulous ice-carving and dilution techniques, and the subtleties of making conversation with customers. He's as fascinating as ever.