Skurnik Unfiltered

"Vermouth rosso is like the skeleton in a human body. It keeps the Boulevardier, the Manhattan, and the Negroni cocktails standing. Our goal was to produce Vermouth di Torino, which is the peak of the pyramid of vermouths." – Vittorio Zoppi

Growing up in Genoa, Vittorio Zoppi was born with an instinctive appreciation for good food and wine and a passion for all things Italian. As a young man, he made a career out of connecting...

"Wine is a culture of the people. This Frappato represents a link between the past and the future." – Gaetana Jacono

Today’s guest is Gaetana Jacono, the woman who pioneered a new style of Sicilian wine in the province of Ragusa. Before she conquered the market with her perfumed, elegant, and enticing wines from Valle dell’Acate, Sicilian wines were typically bold, oaky, Nero d’Avola-based wines pushing 15% a...

“From an historical point of view, every century has always had a crisis, but wine has always survived. Wine culture will always survive. We still have a bright future ahead. There is no doubt.” – Andreas Wickhoff

Climate change has arrived, and weird things are happening in Europe. Hailstorms in March. Bud break in October. Deadly flooding during harvest. Despite it all, Andreas Wickhoff's radiant optimism is root...

"I love the Europeans for believing that their wines can't be emulated, but if that's a truth, Americans need to have that too. Zinfandel is the one grape that California does better than anywhere else in the world. And I'm proud to say that just as a Burgundian should be able to say that about Pinot Noir." – Tegan Passalacqua

This week's guest is Tegan Passalacqua, the legendary winemaker for Turley Wine Cellars and founder o...

“I think there’s this moment in wine now where people are being more honest with themselves. I want to make the wines I believe in and that I want to consume, and then I’m going to find my audience; I’m not going to make wine for an audience. For me, it’s more about a job well done.” – Justin Willett

When people talk about wines from Santa Barbara, they're probably talking about the Santa Yn...

"We're in the business of making agricultural wines, and I think we need to make a distinction right here between agricultural wine and industrial wine. A lot of these vineyards that have these really amazing histories attributed to them also have people with interesting histories. It's not selling the widgets—it's teasing out the stories about these very authentic places and these interesting people and then being able to sh...

"Spirits, when they are at their best, are about facilitating joy and connection and building community. If we can be a small part of that in any way, then I think we've done our job." – Tom Jackson

June is Pride Month, but Tom Jackson likes to say he's Supergay for 365 days a year. After an advertising career and founding the iconic GAYLETTER magazine, Tom launched Supergay Spirits with a flagship vodka. It was a natural plac...

“If you want to make exceptional wine, you have to feel at home because it’s about so many little things—little things that you have to observe and feel and catch over the season to make the wine. It’s always important to be there and to feel the place.” – Nicola Libelli

Nicola Libelli feels at home in the Pfalz. Though he was born and raised in Northern Italy, a taste of 1992 Merkelbach Kinheimer...

“I think joyful, colorful people can still make beautiful, classically-styled, serious wines.” – Corinne Rich

The standard California playbook of Chardonnay and Cabernet often overshadows a rich history of alternative varieties perfectly suited for the modern climate.

This week’s episode features two guests: Corinne Rich and Katie Rouse, the partners and winemakers behind Birdhorse. Balancing their own indepen...

"As a brand, you have to have an identity. It's easy to just make products, but why you exist is much more important that what you produce. The "why" for us is recreating this classic New York rye style that hadn't been around for over 100 years." – Alex Clark

The Battle of Brooklyn began over stolen fruit in a neighborhood watermelon patch, a piece of borough history that now inspires one of New York’s most distinctive ...

The biggest spirits event of the year is right around the corner. Bar Convent Brooklyn is an annual 2-day festival of tastings and seminars from the best in the spirits business.

In preparation for Skurnik’s third appearance at BCB, we’re giving you a bonus episode inside our spirits portfolio with Adam Schuman (Spirits Portfolio Director) and Amanda Elder (Spirits Content & Education Manager). In this episode, they ...

"If you're really tapped into what wine is, giving back is a very natural extension of that. You realize that wine exists in this harmony with its environment, and if you're not giving back out to that environment, you're like the dead end in the ecosystem. It's important that the ecosystem keeps moving around and that good keeps flowing in all directions." – Noah Dorrance

Noah Dorrance's philosophy is clear and consistent: wi...

"Perfection in a spirit is to do things very consistently and don't change things. I'm certainly not perfect, but I think what we're doing at the distillery is close to the best whisky I've made for a long, long time. It's grain to glass, and it's all grown and made in New York State." – Shane Fraser

Tenmile Distillery in Wassaic, NY is making the closest thing to Scotch outside of Scotland, thanks to their secret weapon, the ...

"Sool is an ancient style of rice wine. It has over two-thousand years of documented history. Our style is distinctly influenced by the style of brews that I grew up with—a wilder, more natural, more gastronomical style of Korean wine. And for those who are curious about going deeper, there is always something more." – Alice Jun

Alice Jun remembers makgeolli as an important ingredient of her upbringing in the '90s in her...

“Wine has always been in change, in movement. The wine that we drink now is not the same wine that was drunk a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. For a revolution, you have to go back to the past to see what you have missed, and then bring it back.” – Ricardo Peñalba 

More than a winemaker, Ricardo Peñalba is a self-proclaimed "wine ideologist." When he's out walking the rows of his biodynamic vineyar...

"If a wine is trying to copy somewhere else or be something else, it might taste good, but it needs to have an authenticity and a sense of place to it, and it must be balanced and beautiful to drink. If a wine can put those two concepts together, for me, it's a perfect wine." – Chris Mullineux 

For decades, South Africa’s Swartland region was dominated by industrial farming cooperatives that pumped out massive amoun...

"Everything that we do is very pure. We are mingled or entangled with other species, with the trees, with everything. That's one of the purposes of this tequila: not only producing tequila, but maintaining the harmony and equilibrium with the surroundings." – Daday Suárez

Daday Suárez is a completionist. When he was wrestling with questions of reality and being, he got a degree in philosophy. When he wanted to order wine at re...

“Normally you have a best friend, and sometimes you see each other on weekends, but we are in the same business. We feel lucky. You can’t find it a second time in the world.” – Bernhard Ott

If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. History is full of contemporaries who share visions of success, who, instead of competing, mentor and encourage the other to become greater than one cou...

"I'm very proud to be Mexican. I love my people, I love my country, and we love what we are doing. We do our part with passion, with honesty, with everything that we can with our hands. We are people from the field. We are rancheros, and we feel proud of this. It's our task." – Sergio Vivanco

For five generations, the Vivanco family has been growing agave in Arandas, in the Jalisco highland plateau, though they didn't establis...