The Philip Duff Show

I met Andrew several years ago when he came to hang out at an Old Duff Genever evening I was hosting at Berlin’s marvellous Zyankali Bar, and the good people of Rachel Harrison Communications recently recommended I get him on, which struck me as an excellent idea. 

Turns out he’s fourth-generation American liquor royalty, with a mother from the Hiram Walker family, a great-grandfather who bootlegged during Prohibition, a grandfather...

TJ Lynch is one of the most genuinely hilarious people I know, but the success he and business partner Richard Knapp have had with cocktail dive bar Mother's Ruin - four branches, a fifth and sixth on the way, plus separate concepts in Folly Beach and Johns Island South Carolina - is no joke. 

And it all started with a little bar on Spring Street in Manhattan that they opened in 2011 for the princely sum of $185, 000. 

We talk a...

David’s a great guy I met through Jillian Vose, ex-supremo of mixology at Dead Rabbit and all-round bar goddess. Badger Bevs is a gorgeous range of premium mixers, and David IS ALL IN on the on-premise, so I badly wanted to sit down and hear his story, and it did not disappoint - enjoy! 

Badger Bevs on IG: https://www.instagram.com/badgerbevs?igsh=cTMzYjlrZndteDg2

(Get in touch with Duff!

Podcast business enquiries:  consul...

The Bitter Truth cocktail bitters launched in 2006, after German bartenders Stephan Berg and Alexander Hauck visited London Bar Show, had a drink in Sketch bar, and decided to go for it. 

This year TBT celebrates 20 years, so it was time to sit down with Stephan and Alexander to talk about how a couple of bartenders making extinct bitters in their garage entered a centuries-old category and carved out a thriving business that's...

Jeff's best-known for being a mainstay of New York's world-famous speakeasy-behind-a-phone-booth Please Don't Tell (PDT), where he was hired by Jim Meehan and has worked since 2010, and which post-pandemic he bought from its founder Brian Shebairo along with the hotdog stand it's housed inside, Crif Dogs. 

In a city where bartenders hop around jobs willy-nilly, Jeff credits his tenure at a single bar with helping...

Marcio is very much Our Man In Brazil, an old friend and (during Bar Convent Brazil) I’ve visited his previous, much-vaunted bar Guilhotina. 

Marcio was in NY to do a MasterCard-backed pop-up of his Sao Paolo bar, Eximia, at New York’s Dante, so we carved out a few hours to hang out and catch up. 

Enjoy! 

(Get in touch with Duff!

Podcast business enquiries:  consulting@liquidsolutions.org
(PR friends: we’re only interes...

Tom and Marco are legendary flair competitors, multiple-times world champions, teachers, contest judges - and now, authors of the 501-page (!) “The Flair Bartending Book”.

Its unquestionably the most definitive tome ever written on this chapter in bartending, from flair’s origins in the 1600s to Jerry Thomas & co.’s flamboyant 1800s mixology to TGI Friday’s Bartender Olympics in 1984, THAT movie in 1988, the rise of well-run con...

Paul's been a a friend for ages; he's former London bartender and bar owner, taught seminars for the WSET and Diageo, has lived all over the world* as a conservation biologist - and founded Everleaf. 

*And is currently wrapping up several years living in Iceland!

We chatted about his many careers, the bar biz, learning Chinese, being part of Diageo's Distill Ventures brand incubator program, the state of non-alc, and a...

Ruben’s an old friend from Amsterdam, a native Aruban who bartended in Amsterdam and London, and whose life was changed by a Diplomatico rum training he attended while working as a flair bartender at London’s famed Roadhouse. 

(That training was given by none other than Declan McGurk, himself a former flair bartender, who went on to become Director of Bars at The Savoy, leading them to a #1 spot on W50BB, and is now  Commercial Dire...

Brendan's a hell of a cool guy: Australian, learned distilling in parallel with his university medical and science studies back home, got a Phd from NYU, GM of New York's hugely fun Bathtub Gin, and in late 2025 he opened Hello Hello Bar and Silent Alibi distillery, both of which are in the West 26th Street space in Manhattan  formerly occupied by the New York branch of Pernod-Ricard's epically failed Our/Vodka disti...

It's never dull when I drop round Tony's, even during Dry January, and this session was no exception. 

After chowing down on sushi and sashimi, fancy fellows that we are, we got down to serious discussions encompassing Fraggle Rock, 1980s "wrestling" in the UK, the new American health directives on alcohol, how I happened into a random Miracle Christmas pop-up bar in the wilds of New Jersey, and then (because, as...

,Kurt's back! 

His last appearance on the 'pod was November 2023, so we sat down to catch up on everything that's been going on since then in Africa, South Africa, and further afield, over martinis, delicious SA brandy and a spot of Brooklyn whiskey - enjoy!

Kurt on IG: https://www.instagram.com/kurtschlechter/?hl=en

Cause + Effect on IG: https://www.instagram.com/causeeffectcpt/?hl=en

Order The Flair Bartending Book: ht...

Well, what a year it's been!

I added Kazakhstan to my "list of countries I got drunk in", hit all the usual suspects on the global bar show circuit and added the inaugural Gulf Bar Show in Dubai as well, and spent my usual eight weeks living in Europe to boot, sucking down €9 (instead of $36) martinis and plate after plate of delicious boquerones. 

2025 was also the Year of Tariffs, the launch of Hard Cut Vodka, the do...

Gareth's been a mate and fellow expat-in-New-York for a longish time, but I ran into him again recently when he hosted a mega-fancy private dinner in the already-mega-fancy members' area of private club Casa Tua, a dinner which I gatecrashed in a genteel manner, as my apartment was unexpectedly full of women playing mahjong. 

Gareth was the consummate host, introducing the 2025 special edition of Aberfeldy single malt, the...

Daniyel is, in my opinion, the most naturally gifted brand ambassador I've ever met, but the reason he's been nominated for so many awards and other accolades is that since I met him many years ago, he has always been on a never-ending journey of self-improvement. I don't think I've ever seen him without a broad grin on his face, and if you spend ten seconds in his company, you'll have one, too. 

We caught u...

Michael Neff, like so many of us, fell sideways into hospitality and now 27-odd years later, he's still in it, opening bars across the USA, consulting, podcasting and just plain bartending. 

He's a real bartender's bartender, and you can see that DNA in all the places he's opened or consulted on or worked at: Ward III, Rum House, Holiday Cocktail Lounge (NY), Cottonmouth Club (Houston), Inkwell (Omaha) and other ...

Robert's a swashbuckling figure even by liquor biz standards: son of a fighter pilot, he grew up in England, set up a chain of radio stations across Europe in his youth, ran an agency, then slipped sideways into the liquor biz (armed only with a degree in languages) and climbed the greasy pole at Bacardi for 26 years, ending up as CEO of North America, after stints running the business in Moscow and Asia, among others. 

In 2015...

Angus is so old a friend that we can't remember exactly where we met but we're 99% sure it was at a bar show or get-together of some kind, probably in London, where he, a bartender from Oxford, was in on the ground floor of what we can now look back - after thirty years - to confirm was the birth of the Second Golden Age of cocktails. 

He and I were the two first people from the bar biz to have "Global Brand Ambassado...

I've been a fan of Ben's since his first book, Schott's Original Miscellany came out in 2002, a collection of quirky facts and insights into subcultures; his 13 (!) subsequent books expanded on the theme and have sold more than 2.5 million copies, in multiple languages, to date. 

Ben also wrote two of the best "homage" books in the style of PG Wodehouse, which, if you're a Wodehouse fan, I urge you to r...