Sep 29, 2022
In this truly wide-ranging conversation with bartender, spirits maker, and entrepreneur Robby Haynes, creator of the Sunday's Finest Golf Fashioned, some of the topics we discuss include:
- Robby’s rise through the service industry ranks, beginning as a valet standing out in the cold on Chicago winter nights, then eventually manning bars like the legendary Violet Hour.
- What he learned about making cocktails - from carving ice in hotel pans on his first night as a barback to the ways in which mixing a cocktail is like mixing and mastering a record in a recording studio.
- We also chat about his first spirits project: Apologue Liqueurs, which continues to capture rare and often savory flavors like celery root and aronia berry so that professional and home bartenders can jazz up their favorite cocktails.
- Then, of course, we sample and discuss the $150 Sunday’s Finest Gold Fashioned, a product that can be said to truly DEFINE the luxury bottled cocktail category. Robby and I talk about what that means, how it was created, and how to think about a $150 bottle spend, relative to the other costs associated with a night out at your favorite cocktail bar.
- Along the way, we touch on what it means to “nail the center” of a cocktail, how bartenders learn their bar guests’ “love languages,” why you might want to start thinking about cocktails as a “spa experience,” and much, much more.
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