In 2020, the Cosmopolitan took the drinks world by storm thanks to its fruity flavors and Instagram-worthy appearance. But the Cosmo isn’t the only ‘90s cocktail making a comeback.
In this episode of the “VinePair Podcast,” hosts Joanna Sciarrino and Zach Geballe discuss the triumphant return of the Espresso Martini. In the absence of co-host Adam Teeter, the two are joined by VinePair senior staff writer and host of “Cocktail College,” Tim McKirdy.
What are the origins of this popular “upper-downer”? Could months of making coffee at home during the pandemic be the reason for the cocktail’s recent surge in popularity? Is the Espresso Martini cheugy? Tune in to find out.
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Joanna Sciarrino: From VinePair’s New York City headquarters, I’m Joanna Sciarrino.
Zach Geballe: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.
J: And this is the VinePair Podcast. This week we are joined by Tim McKirdy, senior staff writer and host of “Cocktail College” (my favorite podcast). Tim, thank you for joining us in Adam’s absence.
Tim McKirdy: Thank you so much for having me as I’m literally sitting in Adam’s seat right now.
J: Well, I guess we should keep this standard and talk about what we’ve been drinking lately. So Zach, why don’t you kick it off?
Z: Sure, happy to. So, it’s been a quiet week around my house. Or at least as quiet as it can be with now two children running around. I think the two things that I had lately were really both pretty remarkable. So it’s funny. After we did our tasting of the canned cocktails from Tip Top for last week’s episode, my wife was like,” I’m in a Negroni mood all of a sudden.” So I made a few Negronis over the last few days. She is definitely reveling in the freedom to have a little more to drink now that she’s no longer pregnant, which I certainly can empathize with. And then the other thing I had was we had some friends in town visiting and went out to sushi, which is my son’s favorite food. It’s remarkable how much salmon sashimi he will eat if I just keep ordering it for him. And I had some sake and a Japanese lager, Kirin, and I hadn’t had that combo in a long time. I used to drink that, when I would go to sushi pretty regularly. But we’ve mostly done take-out sushi lately. And even when we would go out, it was often a little bit more sedate and I was just like, “You know what? I’m not driving. We got friends staying over, so I’m going to go for it.” And sake is a category that I wish I knew more about. But that’s also really fun for me because it means I can just try stuff and be like, “Wow, I have no idea what to expect. This is cool.” In a way that would never be true with wine or even beer or spirits or something like that. So that was fun. How about you, Joanna? You had a big birthday.
J: I did. Yesterday it was my birthday, and my partner Evan and I went to Temple Bar. It’s recently reopened. It was a bar that we used to go to all the time back in the day, and then it closed a few years ago. We went there last night, and it was great. It’s under new ownership and has a new bar program, but the interior is just as magical as it used to be. They kept it the same. For cocktails, I had a blue Negroni, so another Negroni. They use blue Campari, Kampari with a K. I tried to look this up, but I don’t know what it is or why. Anyway, the drink was very good. We also had one of their house Gibson. Gibson is not a cocktail that I really order ever. I don’t think I’ve ever ordered a Gibson. But after the “Cocktail College” episode about the Gibson, I really wanted to try one. So I got one of those as well, and that was very good. They do 50-50 gin and manzanilla sherry with a splash or dash of sherry vinegar and onion. And that was really good. Great experience. Great birthday. What about you, Tim?
T: Just a quick note on the blue Negroni. There’s a famous bar. I’m sure Adam’s probably talked about it on the podcast before, called Clumsies in Athens. I was there over the summer and they famously have a blue Negroni as well, the Aegean Negroni. But I’m not sure what they’re using. Is this a trend? That’s two so we just need one more, and then the trend is happening.
J: Well, I just thought I was so curious for a recently reopened, trendy New York City bar to have a blue Negroni.
T: That’s so weird. Did it taste like a Negroni?
J: Yes, it is like a Negroni. It was a little less bitter than a classic Negroni, but very, very delicious.
T: Sounds wonderful. So for me this weekend, I think I drank about four Martinis, that’s kind of standard. On Saturday night, we went out. My girlfriend and I went out for dinner with friends. We actually went to a restaurant here in New York on St. Mark’s. I don’t really go to St. Mark’s place very often, but this is a hidden gem in the middle of St. Mark’s place. But it’s not hidden because you cannot reserve there, and you need to put your name down on a waiting list beforehand. So we were like great, Angel’s Share is right around the corner. We will go and get a cocktail there, and then we’ll put our name down and probably get in straightaway, right? Like we’ll go down at like 5 and get cocktails. Angel’s Share was weirdly shut. Anyway, we went down, put our names down there like, yeah, we have a table in two and a half hours.
J: Oh my goodness.
Z: Wow.
T: And so this place is really hard to get into, but we really wanted to go because it was BYOB as well. So we ended up going back to Angel’s Share, which is a bar that I love and had a favorite cocktail of mine there. It’s called “Pour Me a Grape.” It’s kind of like a twist on a Martini, but with a very nice infused grape is the garnish. And then I had something weird. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was a gin cocktail that was infused and I think fat washed with yogurt, and it was delicious and I was surprised to see that work, but it was amazing. So, yeah, my weekend.
J: What kind of grape was it? Just out of curiosity. A Concord grape?
T: I’m not sure. It seems to be a very specific grape. It’s a red grape, but it’s a very dark red. I’m not sure whether that’s because of the infusion, but it’s quite firm, actually, but really incredible. I always mix up the name. Anyway, we digress.
Z: The interested folks can check out the Angel’s Share website if they want this.
T: They can do it. And at least I have no complaining stories about waiters, right?
Z: That’s true. Well, I mean, none of us came prepared with gripes. And we went out to, as I said, we went to sushi. It was lovely, my first time also taking my son inside a restaurant to eat in since the pandemic started. Because King County, Seattle, just recently passed its own vaccine mandate for indoor dining. So it made us feel a little more comfortable, and we ended up at a table very far away from anyone else. So it was actually quite nice, but no complaints about service. Sorry, listeners. Adam will be back next week. I’m sure he’ll have lots to say. So we wanted to talk, knowing we were going to have you on, Tim. We wanted to talk about a cocktail that is arguably trendy again. I don’t know if we have three specific examples, but I’ve seen out in the wild a bunch and you haven’t covered on “Cocktail College” — you may or may not in the future. I guess people have to tune in to hear that hasn’t come up yet. And that’s the Espresso Martini. And I wanted to start a conversation with this point, which is like when I got into service and into bartending, the Espresso Martini was one of these broader categories — it fits into a couple of categories of drinks, I guess I should say. I want to talk about it and its trendiness through all of these lenses, if we can over the course of the conversation. The first was it’s your classic-ish mix of upper and downer, i.e., caffeine and alcohol. And whether rendered terrifyingly, has Four Loko or a little more classy fashion like an Espresso Martini or an Irish coffee or whatever. That’s obviously a combo that people enjoy. So I want to talk about it in that context, but I also want to talk about it in the context of after-dinner drinks and especially the after-dinner cocktail. Because your ports and your Scotches and your amari are all one kind of thing. But this idea of a cocktail whose mean time of consumption is as dessert or with dessert is really interesting to me, and I wanted to talk about it and talk about how we feel about this category because I rarely, when dining out, would order a cocktail as or part of dessert. But I will admit, I do enjoy an Espresso Martini. And so, yeah, so let’s start with this and for both of you, Joanna and Tim, when we think about this category of cocktails or drinks that include caffeine and alcohol, how do you feel about that? Is that something that you recoil from at this point or enjoy or what?
J: Well, I think that as you mentioned that there are two categories of that particular type of concoction, right? You have your Four Lokos and you have your Red Bull and vodkas, and then you have like your Espresso Martinis and your Irish Coffee is in and more maybe refined examples. I don’t know that I would go for the former. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Four Loko — when it included caffeine and when it stopped including caffeine. I have had a vodka Red Bull, but it’s not something I order often. I think when I have an Espresso Martini — and I have ordered them because I think they’re very delicious — it’s not necessarily because of the caffeine. It’s not because of that, right? It’s not because it’s an upper and a downer. That’s not really why I would get it. I like the taste of it.
T: Yeah, I would agree there. I’m never really thinking about caffeine, whether it’s in the drink or not. Like, it’s funny that you bring this point up, Zach, because I think it is a very interesting part of this conversation. And especially like, yeah, there are high-brow versions of alcohol with caffeine and lower-brow versions, but I never really think about it in terms of that. For me, it’s just more like coffee. Coffee being something that I don’t know, as you get older, it’s a flavor that you enjoy more. Maybe it seems sophisticated and an easier way to get into cocktails. And I think we can chat about that later. But yeah, neither of the styles of uppers and downers are really drinks that I tend to gravitate towards. I don’t order too many Espresso Martinis myself.
Z: See, to me what I find interesting about all this and maybe we’re not the best representative sample as professionals in some sense. But I do think that for a lot of people, even if they wouldn’t necessarily cop to it or even recognize it, that there’s something about, like, the Espresso Martini and drinks of that ilk as like, you’re finishing a meal. Perhaps, I mean, that’s often where I think a lot of people encounter it, although of course, you can go into cocktail bars and order that and people might just have them at any old time. But for a lot of people, it’s like you’re finishing one part of your evening and transitioning into the next, and that, like, the presence of caffeine there, even if people are not aware of it or thinking about it as, like, “Oh, I want to stay awake for a while longer.” I remember working in a bar years ago and the Espresso Martini was a drink we made from time to time and having a whole conversation among the bartending staff about like, do we always make this drink with regular espresso? Or do we make it with decaf or whatever? And I was strongly of the belief, and am to this day, that unless someone asked you for decaf, you should not serve them decaf. If someone is ordering an Espresso Martini, they are expecting espresso and we don’t really know what they’re intending to do. And obviously, if someone’s tired and goes home, it’s like the end of the world. Probably better in some cases, of course. But it’s not really my job to impose in that regard. And so I think that it’s important to note that it’s not necessarily the only reason I want the drink is that I want alcohol and caffeine. Obviously, there are other ways to get that. But it is a relevant point and a relevant part of the experience of the drink. And the other part of it is like, I haven’t yet had decaf espresso that I thought was any good. I’ll drink decaf coffee on rare occasions, but like decaf espresso. And so you kind of lose something in the cocktail if you do make it with decaf with my experience was about my other reason for not wanting to do it is just like, why are we making a worse version of this drink just because we don’t know, don’t want someone to stay awake, I guess?
J: Yeah, that’s such a weird thing, I would never even think to make it with decaf espresso. But it’s interesting that you bring this up, and in researching this before we were discussing it, every article that has been written about the Espresso Martini being back has used the upper- downer thing as a reason for why it’s so popular now, which I think is really interesting. Like, people need that right now.
T: I don’t know, I really don’t buy into that. But I’m interested to hear one thing from you Joanna, which is I do not associate the Espresso Martini as being an end-of-the-night drink. For me, it’s one that a lot of people kick the night off with.
J: No, I think that’s how I would take it. I mean, I get that sweet and it’s coffee, and a lot of people have that after dinner and that makes sense. Into Zach’s point, like if that’s where your night is beginning. Sure. But for me, I would rather have it before the night begins or before dinner. And I would like to advocate for it as a brunch cocktail. Does that not make a lot of sense?
T: Maybe that is the perfect place for the Espresso Martini.
Z: For sure. I think that’s a good point, Tim, and I think you’re certainly right. And maybe in different contexts, you would see it as a totally viable aperitif cocktail. It certainly brings bitterness into play, which is a key component in my eyes in any kind of aperitif drink. But it’s often so sweet that to me, it is a little bit like I’ve always thought of it as dessert. When bartending, I would say 85 to 90 percent of the Espresso Martinis I made were for people who are finishing their meal or we’re just having dessert or whatever. It was not a happy-hour drink, let’s put it that way, at least in my experience. But I do think that the brunch part is really interesting. And I also want to talk about that. I also think about it a lot as being a coffee cocktail that’s cold, which is unusual but not completely anomalous. We think about coffee drinks and we think about hot coffee drinks, right? Those have a totally different experience, literally like you’re engaging with the flavors of the coffee differently. The things that work well with it are a little bit different. And service-wise, it is different. To me, there’s something that’s very, it’s like not surprising in a way that in this era where like, I think among a certain set cold brew is at least as popular as hot coffee, that this cold coffee drink has had a resurgence for sure that there’s something about cold coffee. When I came up in the restaurant, that was the thing that got you an angry email or eventually a bad Yelp review. No one wanted their coffee cold. And now, it looks like cold brew is being one example, but also just this cocktail, people are finding that to be more appealing.
T: I don’t know. I think that’s an interesting point. I think that’s correlation more than causation because otherwise, I don’t see anyone drinking White Russians or whatever anymore, and classically with your Kahlúa in there, too. I don’t think it’s to do with serving temperature of coffee. I don’t know. I think before we move on, one point that we should add, which is very famous and the backstory of this cocktail and to my mind, the only thing that’s relevant when it comes to uppers and downers, which is the origin of this cocktail. It has an incredible story. For anyone who’s listening who might not have heard it before, this is a brasserie in London and in the early 1980s. It’s a guy called Dick Bradsell, who’s essentially London’s answer to Dale DeGroff, godfather of cocktails here in New York. And famously, some people say it was a supermodel. Some people say it wasn’t. It was just a very good-looking woman, I believe, came up to the bar and asked for a drink that would “f*ck me up, then wake me up.” Sorry for the rough language there, but that’s the origin story, and that’s the genesis of the Espresso Martini. And interestingly, when it was born, the Vodka Espresso was the name. The Espresso Martini comes later. So for me, that’s the only thing that really matters about the upper down here, the genesis story.
Z: Tim, does it drive you crazy that it has, that it’s appended with Martini?
J: That happened later, right, in the “tini” phase?
Z: I don’t know that, but I know that you generally dislike that suffix, if you will call it that for any drink that is served in that kind of glassware.
T: I mean, I don’t think it’s a Martini. But I’ll say this, I think it says a lot about how cocktail culture has evolved, and it also has to do with the name. There are two, right? Like we went from a drink called the Vodka Espresso, and then we started calling it the Espresso Martini and it’s served in the Martini glass. And I think that says a lot about this drink, which is basically you order this drink when you’re maybe, when you’re starting out at bars and you want to look sophisticated. It’s the Martini glass that makes everything look sophisticated. It’s a beautiful-looking drink, and it’s also very easy to enjoy because it’s sweet, it’s bitter, and it’s vodka. So there’s no flavor of booze there. So I think it’s this idea of trying to buy sophistication.
Z: Yeah. The visual appeal of it is obviously a huge part of it and that the presentation would not work in anything other than a Martini glass or a coupe or something served up and elegant. And it’s interesting, too, not to get too wonky in terms of how drinks are made, but again, we have you on Tim, so we might as well a little bit. This is like to me, a fascinating cocktail where, like, when I would make them, you really have to pay attention to the texture of the drink. It’s very easy to get it wrong, because if you do, it separates. Or at least that’s in my experience, and that isn’t obviously what you want with any drink. You are bringing a lot of different ingredients together in a fashion that is, when you’re mixing a hot ingredient like a shot of espresso and immediately chilling it, I think there’s a lot there that should be hard to mess up. But I think it’s actually more difficult to make the drink well than people think. That’s another reason why I think I have a certain admiration for it as a cocktail. Even though as a bartender, having to step away from the bar to pull a shot of espresso if you had to was never, like, my favorite thing to do. It was a drink that I took pride in making, which wasn’t always true for all the drinks I made.
J: I was just going to say that I think that there are a lot of badly or poorly made Espresso Martinis out there and now that they’re back, and maybe we can discuss that a little bit like is, is it indeed back? I feel like I’m seeing them on menus everywhere — from last night at Temple Bar, they have a version of an Espresso Martini but also at an old- school Italian restaurant that I went to this past weekend. They had an Espresso Martini on the menu, and I just found that so curious and so funny because this trend is clearly working its way across New York City and maybe the rest of the country, I don’t know. And so when Evan ordered the Espresso Martini at the old-school Italian restaurant, I don’t know that it was properly made. It didn’t have the big foamy, frothy top that we like to see. It did have the requisite three espresso beans, but it was kind of tan, so I don’t know what it was made with. But I also just think that the people who are drinking Espresso Martinis right now maybe don’t care so much about how they’re made. What do we think?
Z: It depends on where you’re drinking it, right?
J: Yes, of course.
T: But also, Temple Bar is a very trendy spot right now. It’s very hard to get into. It’s a classic New York place, it got written up in The Times the week before it opened. And it’s right there next to SoHo, right? I think with the Espresso Martini, there’s a couple of things when it comes to making it that maybe can make it easier. I would be surprised if more bars aren’t doing this. So like, Zach, you mentioned the fact of using hot espresso, and it has to be fresh. That is the thing that historically has pissed off bartenders about this cocktail. And since the late 90s, early 2000s when it was at its original first peak, now we have cold-brew concentrate, and I would be surprised if a lot of bars are not using that. Jeffrey Morgenthaler has a great recipe on his website. He does a lot of home experiments, is a famous bartender, and that’s what he uses for his recipe, and he has a recipe for making it. So I would be surprised if more aren’t doing that.
J: Temple Bar’s is with cold brew.
T: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense and it’s just easier for consistency and whatnot, right? But yeah, I think the conversation is going this way, too, but I think it depends who’s drinking it. I also think that most people don’t care how it tastes; it’s about how it looks. This is an Instagram drink, 100 percent. I think people would rather that it looks good than it tastes completely balanced.
J: I mean, I think we could liken this maybe to the Cosmopolitan, and what we saw happen with the Cosmo earlier this year is still happening. I want to say, is this drink cheugy?
T: I think it’s absolutely the opposite. I think the people who call us “cheugy” are the people that are drinking this right now. And I think that’s a really great point, though, about the Cosmo. I think there’s so many similarities there. They were born in the same era, both ‘80s drinks, but became popular in the ‘90s, and also they look great. But to my mind, it goes back to that sophistication thing again. So right, like, there’s this idea that a certain generation is looking back to the ‘90s for fashion and what’s cool now. Yeah, but the Espresso Martini does look more elegant and sophisticated than a Cosmo. So maybe that’s why this is becoming more popular now. Has it overtaken the Cosmo?
Z: Well, maybe seasonally too. It’s not that Cosmo has a season, exactly, but given the ingredients in the flavor profile, it feels more like a spring-summer drink than a fall-winter drink. And even though this is a cold cocktail, it still has a lot of those wintry flavors that work well in this time of year. I wanted to ask, since I can’t weigh in on the cheugy thing because I’m clinically uncool. Tim, do you think one of the other things that might have changed with this drink over time is more options when it comes to coffee liqueur? Because to me, the interesting thing here is that when I made it in my bartending career, we never had coffee liqueur other than Kahlúa on the bar. There was not that proliferation of other options out there and you might be able to get a more interesting, balanced, and enjoyable cocktail. Not that everything is Kahlúa, but it’s a specific coffee flavor. It’s not as pure coffee as you can find it.
T: I think that that is why you might find a bar like Temple Bar, for example, making this drink now because of the proliferation of these cold-brew liqueurs.
J: That’s a good point.
T: Yeah, I personally struggle with this one because everyone knows the main one, right? Mr. Black. And I know a lot of drinks writers, too, that love it. I’ve just always struggled with it myself personally. I go back to it time and time again, different bottles. I’ve never been able to. I just don’t get it. I want to enjoy it because I feel like there’s something wrong with me. But I actually prefer an Espresso Martini with Kahlúa, but I think I have a little bit of a sweet tooth and I’m saying that I’m in the minority there, but I definitely think that has to do with it.
Z: At a minimum, you have options, and you can do the thing that certain bartenders and bars like to do, which is to iterate and explore. You’re not bound by only having one thing in the category that you can toy with. Certainly, you’re seeing in some of these examples a lot of variation, even if the vodka component is nominally just there for alcoholic purpose. Certainly, I’ve worked places where we would make it to order with vanilla vodka, things like that. It’s a way to incorporate flavored vodkas if you choose to. And you can get interesting results. Actually, I will be completely honest. Maybe my personal favorite version was actually with Absolut Mandarin, which worked surprisingly well. I really like coffee and orange; I often will get a simple espresso drink and put a little bit of orange zest in there. I really like that combo. Not everyone does. But there’s a lot you could do with it. And again, we live in this world now where coffee and coffee flavors have gotten more sophisticated. I was going to say what I meant to mention earlier and can’t believe I forgot. Setting aside cold brew, like really, what we are also seeing is an entire generation that is now stepping into drinking and has over the last half-decade that was raised on frappuccinos, and this is also that, right? This is basically just a small-scale boozy frappuccino. That’s, I think, a big part of its comeback appeal is not just harkening back to the ‘90s, but also to like this is a flavor set that people who are in their early 20s may have been drinking this flavor for a decade or more. So it’s not like a purely adult, sophisticated allure. It’s also like a familiar set of flavors with booze in it.
J: Yeah, and in reading about the origin of this drink to when Dick Bradsell made it, it was a new flavor combination, right? The vodka and the coffee and the simple syrup to tie it together.
Z: Remember for all of us, it may seem silly. But for an older generation, espresso was an exotic thing. In the early ‘80s — maybe not in London, but in a lot of places, even here in Seattle, home of Starbucks — the idea that a bar would have an espresso machine was not a given. Now we take it as a given, right. Who doesn’t have an espresso machine, but it was definitely not the case, even when I got into the restaurant industry in the early 2000s. The places I worked did, but there were plenty of restaurants that didn’t, and it’s become more of a must-have kind of thing. But that incorporation of those flavors and especially this strength of espresso into American life is definitely somewhat recent.
J: Yeah, that’s a good point. As you know, people have espresso makers at home or maybe like Nespresso. Over the past 18 months or so coffee has been such a big part of life at home. Then we saw the proliferation of coffee drinks like Dalgona coffee and things like that, and people wanting to make cocktails at home as well. It makes sense that this would be a drink that would regain some popularity.
T: If you do make one, if you do master at home again, going back to the appearance, it does look great. You feel like you’ve achieved something. You put those three coffee beans on the top. It makes it look so iconic. Do we all think it is trending, though? That’s a question that I want to know.
Z: I 100 percent do, and here’s my reason why. In addition to just talking about seeing it places, I think it fits very, very, very, very comfortably into this category. Two categories that we discussed. We discussed the first, which is ‘90s throwbacks, which is obviously undeniably having a moment. The other reason is, despite what we just said about people getting more experimental with their coffee-making at home and maybe taking more of that into their own hands, it also very much fits into a cocktail that probably most people are not going to make at home, even maybe during the pandemic, right? Maybe you were willing to make it with Nespresso if you have that — most people don’t have an espresso machine at home — and it’s just the kind of drink where my experience with it always as a bartender and even as a drinker was, I just don’t want to mess with it at home. Maybe if you’re the kind of person that Tim was talking about, who doesn’t give a shit about what it tastes like, fine, whatever you want. But even then, if you want it to look good, you want someone who knows what they’re doing to make it. Like I said at the beginning, it’s not easy to get right. And if you’re an inexperienced bartender, it’s actually a pretty tricky drink to nail, especially visually, but also the taste. And it just fits neatly into what I’ve seen and anticipated seeing as people return to bars: Drinks that people are not going to make at home but that they really want to have. So it just fits into those two categories pretty cleanly. So I mean, I don’t know that it’s going to have the same moment it had in the 90s, in the early 2000s, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible. What, do you disagree Tim?
T: I don’t necessarily disagree, I think, and I don’t want to go against the VinePair line here in a way, but I think it’s definitely infiltrated more cocktail menus than the Cosmo did. We spoke a lot about the Cosmo on this show and we’ve written about it, but I think I definitely see it more places than that. I think this is not a very good answer, but I think ultimately, it depends where you’re drinking, right? It depends on what age you are and the types of bars that you go to a certain extent. Not completely, because I love this idea of having this old-school Italian serving Espresso Martinis. What could be more Italian, by the way, than espresso and Martini? It’s so Italian.
Z: But I assure you that Espresso Martini at that old-school Italian place has been on that menu since the ‘90s. It didn’t drop off and come back every year since 1994.
T: Almost certainly.
J: I think this was a great chat. Thank you so much for joining us, Tim, and for lending your expertise. And Zach, great to chat as usual. Thank you both.
T: Thank you. Sounds great.
Thanks so much for listening to the “VinePair Podcast.” If you love this show as much as we love making it, please leave us a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever it is you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show.
Now, for the credits, VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City and Seattle, Washington, by myself and Zach Geballe, who does all the editing and loves to get the credit. Also, I would love to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all this possible and also to Keith Beavers, VinePair’s tastings director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team who are instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again.
Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.
