In this wide ranging conversation with spirits expert and cocktail author Kurt Maitland, some of the topics we discuss include:
- Some notes from the early days of Kurt’s spirits adventures, including a Jameson drinking college friend from Hong Kong, a bar with a Dutch name in Brooklyn, and a conference room at an architectural firm.
- How Kurt came to co-found the Manhattan Whiskey Club, and some crucial tips for starting a spirits appreciation group in the post-COVID world.
- Then we dive into Kurt’s books, which are both intense and wonderful in their own ways. We cover how he leveraged his super powers as a paralegal to assemble the over 1,100 cocktail recipes in his first book, Drink, and why he was bitten by the infusion bug, which inspired The Infused Cocktail Handbook.
- We also take time in this interview to discuss the current state of the bar scenes in both New York and Washington, DC and where we think things are headed as we continue to slog through what I refer to as the “long tail of COVID.”
- Along the way, we explain why people only ever follow a cocktail recipe to the letter once, the problem with the term “terroir,” what to drink with former president Lyndon B. Johnson, and much, much more.
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