#82 Simon Ford - Ford's Gin, Plymouth Gin, 86 Co., Martinis, London, NYC, First Brand Ambassador, Tales of the Cocktail,

Simon Ford is the co-founder of The 86 Co. and creator of Ford's Gin, and the man widely credited as the first brand ambassador the modern spirits industry ever produced (though he's not so sure about that). In this episode, we trace his career from a London wine shop job secured despite admitting he didn't actually like wine, through his years at Ideal Brands working on Absolut alongside Nick Blacknell, Dick Bradsell and Wayne Collins, to opening the celebrated Koba bar in Brighton and the call that sent him off to launch Plymouth Gin around the world.

We follow Simon through his years as Plymouth's North America ambassador, the move to New York in 2006 at the height of the craft cocktail renaissance, and the senior Pernod Ricard directorship he turned down to build something of his own. We dig deep into the founding of The 86 Co. in 2012 alongside Employees Only's Jason Kosmas and Dushan Zaric — the survey of 149 bartenders that shaped Ford's Gin, the 90-plus formula iterations before Simon was satisfied, the moment Dale DeGroff invested on the spot after tasting it at the distillery, and the blind taste test at Pegu Club where Audrey Saunders put Ford's up against 14 other gins and Simon picked it out.

We cover the famously oversubscribed Tales of the Cocktail launch party in 2013 (which I was at), the 2019 acquisition by Brown-Forman — including the full story of how it came together and the day Simon fell fully clothed into a pond on the Louisville campus — and the unvarnished realities of scaling a spirit brand from nothing. The episode closes with Simon's current projects: a campaign to revive sloe gin, a new Ford's innovation in development at Thames Distillers, and the annual Ford's Gin party at Tales of the Cocktail.

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Jaksot(91)

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We're doing something different this time: a special edition replaying the Liquipedia seminar we delivered live at Tales of the Cocktail 2026 in New Orleans, sponsored by Belvedere — forty-five increa...

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#90 David Wondrich – Cocktail History: The Only William, Savoy Without a American Bar, WW2 Supply Officers, Business Cards, Unmarked Graves, America's Love of Ice

David Wondrich is a drinks historian and author of Imbibe!, Punch and the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, and The Comic Book History of the Cocktail. The conversation runs from a $3,000 fre...

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#89 Julie Reiner - NYC, Clover Club, Pegu Club, Cocktail Renaissance, Milady's

Julie Reiner arrived in New York in 1998 after a stint bartending in San Francisco, following her wife to a city she'd always wanted to live in, and found a scene stuck on sour mix and nothing fresh, ...

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#88 Grover Sanschagrin - Agave Matchmaker, CRT, Additives, Lawsuits, Police Raids, Agave Syrup

Grover Sanschagrin is the co-founder, alongside his wife Scarlet, of Agave Matchmaker — the platform, formerly known as Tequila Matchmaker, that has spent over a decade cataloguing how tequila and oth...

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#87 Daniele Biondi - Indiana Jones of Rum, Clairin & Haiti, Viche & Colombia, Hampden, Velier, Luca Gargano

Daniele Biondi is one of the world's leading experts on the rum category. Working with Luca Gargano at Velier, he is one of the key figures behind the international rediscovery of Haitian clairin, the...

20 Heinä 2h 17min

#86 British Rum Special - Dropworks, Outlier, J. Gow: History, Production, GI, Tasting, Rum Market, Future of Rum, British vs. Caribbean

We sat down — hungover, under-slept, and drinking before nine in the morning — with three of the people actually building British rum from the ground up: Lewis Hayes of DropWorks, Collin van Schayk of...

13 Heinä 1h 46min

#85 Dré Masso - 30 Years of Bartending, Creating Altos, Henry Besant, LAB Bar, Nusa Caña, Dick Bradsell, Potato Head

Dré Masso is one of the most consequential figures in the modern cocktail world — a British-Colombian bartender whose career has stretched from the epicentre of 1990s London to a beach club in Bali an...

6 Heinä 1h 52min

#84 Jörg Meyer - Gin Basil Smash, 50 Best Bars, Le Lion, German Bar Scene

Jörg Meyer is the founder of Le Lion — Bar de Paris in Hamburg, one of the most consistently recognised cocktail bars in the world and the birthplace of the Gin Basil Smash, a drink he created in 2008...

29 Kesä 1h 31min