Drinks Adventures - Wine, beer, whisky, gin & more with James Atkinson
Wine lover? Craft beer fan? Drink whisky, bourbon, cognac or rum? Or maybe it's gin or vodka or mezcal you're into? Based in Australia, but globally minded, Drinks Adventures covers all these drinks and more: Japanese sake, cider, tequila, champagne, cocktails... we could go on! Listen in as award-winning drinks writer James Atkinson interviews the world's biggest names in craft brewing, winemaking, distilling and mixology, along with sommeliers, mixologists, sake samurais, masters of wine and certified cicerones. Tags: wine, beer, brewing, gin, whisky, whiskey. bourbon, cognac, rum, tequila, mezcal, champagne, cocktails, cider, Japanese sake
Episodes
July 23, 2025 • 29 mins
We’re joined this episode by West Australian beer writer and retailer, Guy Southern, winner of the Beer Media prize at the Australian International Beer Awards 2025.
Guy may be familiar to you from his regular reporting for The Crafty Pint, where he’s covered the West Australian beer scene for well over a decade.
And he was also lead researcher and writer for a recent documentary
detailing the history of beer in Western Australia...
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July 2, 2025 • 26 mins
We’re joined this episode by Steve Jeffares, co-founder of The Local
Taphouse and Stomping Ground Brewing Company in Melbourne, as well as GABS, the Great Australian Beer Spectapular festival.
Steve’s new solo venture is Happy Camper, a community-focused
venue in Glen Iris, Melbourne, in the site formerly occupied by Deeds Brewing, which ceased operations last year.
As you’ll hear, it’s a deliberate step back from scale and spec...
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June 19, 2025 • 40 mins
In this episode, we welcome back Australian spirits writer and historian Luke McCarthy to discuss two new books he has published in 2025.
The first is Forgotten Spirits: A History of the Distilling Industry in Victoria — a landmark publication commissioned by Spirits Victoria and supported by funding from the Victorian Government.
This is the first time anyone has attempted a comprehensive historical account of distilling in Vic...
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June 5, 2025 • 32 mins
We’re joined this episode by John Slattery, co-founder of Greenbanks
Tasmanian Whisky Co.
Greenbanks started production in late 2023 with Tasmania’s largest capacity still that is fully optimised for producing whisky of all
styles.
In fact, the capacity of the production still at Greenbanks exceeds the combined capacity of all other whisky distilleries on the island.
This scale is designed to support Greenbanks’ goal of produci...
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May 29, 2025 • 41 mins
We’re joined this episode by Charlie Echlin and Chico Rosa from Fielden
Whisky of England, which has recently launched its range in Australia.
Fielden began life in 2017 as The Oxford Artisan Distillery, a company focused predominately on white spirits that it distilled from scratch using historic grain varieties.
But it also laid down for maturation small quantities of grain spirit that underpinned its relaunch as Fielden Whisky...
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May 7, 2025 • 42 mins
We’re joined this episode by James Brindley and Anubha Sahasrabuddhe
of brewer Lion Australia.
After his previous 28-year stint with Lion finished in 2021, James surprised the industry when he announced his return as managing director in May 2024, under a somewhat unorthodox arrangement where he would share the leadership with Anubha.
With a background in CPG – consumer packaged goods – Anubha held
senior leadership roles at The ...
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April 16, 2025 • 25 mins
One of the standout sessions at the recent Australian Distillers Association conference was presented by Dr Marlize Becker of the University of Queensland and Luke Farrelly of Canefields Distillery on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
Luke is a fourth-generation cane farmer who wanted to carry on the family tradition and decided rum was the most logical vehicle for him to do so.
But the discovery of ten different ‘heirloom’ sugarcane ...
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March 27, 2025 • 25 mins
We’re joined this episode by Steve Magarry and Jonny Croft of Sydney Rum Distillery, which has just unveiled its new home in the former Oak milk factory in Muswellbrook.
Now, that is of course a few hours north of Sydney, in the Upper Hunter Valley to be precise. In fact, the historic Oak site was most recently utilised as a winery.
But the selection of the Oak factory follows an exhaustive search across Sydney for a site that c...
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March 21, 2025 • 31 mins
Fred Siggins is a Melbourne-based spirits writer with more than 20 years of experience in the drinks and hospitality industries.
He joins us to discuss what I think is a fairly momentous development. Halliday Wine Companion, the definitive guide to Australian wine for almost 40 years, is expanding its remit to include spirits.
Launching in April 2025, Halliday Spirits offers comprehensive reviews and ratings of Australian-made an...
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March 14, 2025 • 9 mins
Welcome to a special news edition of Drinks Adventures as we unpack Lark Distilling’s half yearly results.
This time last year, Lark Distilling CEO Satya Sharma joined us on the podcast for a full-length interview, which I strongly recommend you listen to if you haven’t already.
Twelve months on and Lark appears to making strong progress against the priorities and objectives that Sash outlined in that episode.
The ASX-listed com...
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March 6, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode, veteran beer journalist Matt Kirkegaard returns to the Drinks Adventures podcast.
Early in 2024, Matt surprised many people in the brewing industry when he announced a career change, having spent more than two decades as a beer writer and educator.
This also meant the closure of Brews News, the beer industry publication and podcast that I edited between 2015 and 2018, prior to starting Drinks Adventures.
And not on...
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February 26, 2025 • 38 mins
Renowned wine writer and champagne specialist Tyson Stelzer joins us in this opening episode of Season 20.
Late in 2024, Tyson released the seventh edition of The Champagne Guide, which is 50 per cent bigger than the previous edition, featuring a record 1260 reviews spread across 880 pages adorned with Tyson’s beautiful photographs.
The guide features a Hall of Honour ranking the best producers and the best champagnes of the year i...
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December 16, 2024 • 27 mins
We last spoke with Chris Hatcher in May 2021, at which time he was still chief winemaker of the legendary Wolf Blass brand.
Chris has since retired from Wolf Blass, but it’s not retirement as you or I would know it, because Chris has thrown himself into his own venture, Hatch Wines, which is what we’ll be discussing today.
Chris has relished the opportunity to build his small, family-run brand from scratch. And unlike his corporate...
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December 9, 2024 • 42 mins
We're joined this episode by Elizabeth McCall, master distiller of Woodford Reserve in Kentucky.
Elizabeth was not really a whiskey enthusiast when she first joined parent company Brown-Forman in 2009 as a member of the research and development department.
But she soon developed a taste for it, becoming a master taster in 2015, before being effectively anointed as successor to the legendary Chris Morris when she was appointed assis...
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November 21, 2024 • 22 mins
Haydon Morgan and Damien Ryan are the founders of First Light Brewing Co, a start-up in Wollongong, NSW.
You may recall Haydon’s voice from the special documentary episode we did on Australian brewing legend Chuck Hahn a few years ago now.
Haydon and Damien are both longstanding residents of the Illawarra region and they met each other while working at Lion, where they realised they had complementary skillsets for setting up a brew...
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November 6, 2024 • 26 mins
In this episode we meet Ian Schmidt and Vic Orlow, founders of South Australia’s Tin Shed Distilling, the company behind Iniquity Whisky and other brands.
The original tin shed was in Adelaide’s inner west, adjacent to Ian’s other business manufacturing flagpoles, of all things.
Ian has since exited the flagpole game to focus on whisky, and he and Vic have relocated their distillery to a different tin shed in the Adelaide Hills.
Th...
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October 30, 2024 • 28 mins
In this episode we meet two of the founders of Queensland Rum Day, Matt Hobson of Cavu Distilling and Nil Desperandum Rum, and Duncan Littler of Bundaberg Rum.
The second ever Queensland Rum Day is coming up this Saturday 2 November 2024, and this year brings with it a special collaborative rum showcasing liquid from four distilleries, two of which I’ve already mentioned – the others being Beenleigh and Kalki Moon.
They’re calling ...
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October 28, 2024 • 28 mins
This is a special episode of the show looking at the future of Australian wine, produced in partnership with Endeavour Drinks.
First up, we meet Endeavour’s head of fine wine, Andrew Shedden, who sets out the challenges that the category is currently facing.
In short, those of us who love wine are getting older, and we’re not buying as much as we did in the past.
And younger consumers are choosing to drink beverages other than wine...
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October 16, 2024 • 21 mins
We welcome back to the show Daniel Motlop of Seven Seasons Spirits, who we previously met back in May 2021.
Coming up, Daniel reveals that Seven Seasons has returned to majority family ownership following the demise of his former business partner and distributor, Mighty Craft.
Mighty Craft backer Pure Asset Management has emerged as Daniel’s new business partner and together they have big ambitions for the brand that has showed so ...
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September 30, 2024 • 18 mins
Nelson Hernandez is master distiller at Venezuela’s Diplomatico Rum, where he has worked for an incredible 38 years.
After studying mechanical engineering, Nelson initially worked in the oil industry before taking a job in 1986 as Maintenance and Project Manager at the Diplomatico distillery.
Working alongside rum master Tito Cordero, Nelson learnt the craft of rum production the Diplomatico way, which means applying the highest qu...
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