The Philip Duff Show

,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...

The irrepressible Edvinas "Eddie" Rudzinskas is a fixture at just about every bar show and party, and the Instagram he created, @cocktails_for_you, boasts 565, 000 followers. 

We sat down during BCBerlin to talk about how he went from working in his native Lithuania to bartending in a small town in Ireland, falling deep down the rabbit hole of mixology, and founding Cocktails for You, initially as a Facebook page sharing a...

I've always followed the industry in Australia closely, as in my opinion it is, pound-for-pound, the best mixology nation on Earth; I've visited often, for teaching and consulting, and wrote a column in Australian Bartender magazine for some years. 

Last year the Sydney Morning Herald broke a story (sadly, only the first of many) uncovering alleged wide-ranging abuse at the renowned Australian hospitality group Swillhouse,...

I met Andrea in the End Times, even though we didn't know it, then; he made several delicious cocktails with Old Duff Genever for me, in New Zealand, in mid-March 2020, before the world closed down. 

Andrea is a remarkably cool guy who came from Italy to, first, Australia, and then NZ, to perfect his craft, knowing that first he had to perfect his language skills. 

He then worked months - even after winning national and internat...

Edmund co-founded Nightjar, a speakeasy cocktail bar with live music, in London with his life and business partner, Roisin Stimpson, in 2010, with its first head bartender being Marian Beke. 

Nightjar quickly stormed the lists of nominations, Best Bars, and more, and a lot of that success was due to Marian's incredible cocktail presentations, in bespoke vessels, using skill and flavour combinations that upped London's game...

I met Steve at Cologne Bar Symposium earlier this year, which also hosted the first-ever launch of Skrewball Peanut Butter Whiskey outside the USA. 

We chatted a bit and I attended his seminar; to say Steve's life is fascinating is like saying Elon Musk is a decent engineer. 

From a childhood of wealth in Cambodia with servants and bodyguards, to contracting polio and losing the use of one of his legs, to years of barely subsist...

Our mutual friend (and PR guru) Laura Peet suggested I have liquor biz lifer Ken on, and he was a great guest! 

We chatted about the liquor industry, recent developments like GLP-1 inhibitors, the effects of phone-based gambling on drinks sales in bars, the Seagrams curse, and a whole bunch more, while I was drinking a Fre Damm Tostada a non-alc beer whose parent brand, Damm coincidentally is imported to the US by United States Beve...

Sarah Morrissey is a little bundle of joy on the NY bar circuit, but also a skilled mixologist who's had her bar programs reviewed in the likes of the New York Times on multiple occasions, shepherded bar programs to James Beard and Tales of the Cocktail nominations (and wins) and is rightly respected by all who know her. She's done stints at Le Veau d'Or, Frenchette, Ernesto's, Dutch Kills, and many more. 

She re...

Return guest and one of my favorite people, Robin Robinson is back! He's a sales & marketing guru, a brand sherpa, a truly gifted storyteller and spirits expert - and he's just written another book, so back on The Philip Duff Show he comes.

We talked storytelling, Star Wars, some of the mindbending facts he's unearthed for the new book (First use of a sherry barrel for whiskey aging? 1854. Most important whiskey d...

Miguel became a mainstay of the burgeoning Spanish cocktail scene in the early 2000s, and we met in 2008, when he brought a crew of Spanish bartenders to the Bols Bartender Academy, which I had founded in Amsterdam. We stayed friends and soon after he moved to the USA, where we reconnected after I moved to NY in 2012. 

Miguel had a wild ride, from his native Spain to his parents' Venezuela, back to Spain and then on to the Domi...

Me and Christian met almost twenty years ago; when I was still living in the Netherlands, my friend Robin Weiss asked me to help judge the Havana Club Germany bartender contests, and Christian was involved even back then. 

In the next few years we hung out at Havana Club contests in Sylt, Dusseldorf, Havana itself and several other cities I can't recall, plus of course Bar Convent Berlin, and Christian always impressed me with ...

This is the last of our Tales-recorded episodes, and our final collab with The Speakeasy!

Amir, originally from Tel Aviv, runs the cocktail program at one of Manhattan's hidden gems, the amazing Ophelia Lounge on top of the Beekman Tower, one of NY's last remaining true Art Deco skyscrapers, overlooking the UN. 

He was down at Tales helping us at The Australian Embassy, so myself and Greg dragged him out from behind the bar...