Back Bar is a rollicking deep dive into the events, phenomenon, relationships and human foibles that shaped the world’s most iconic drinks. Hosted by food and beverage writer Greg Benson and featuring guest appearances from industry luminaries like Derek Brown, Robert Simonson and Sother Teague, Back Bar’s vaudevillian approach to storytelling is a refreshing cocktail of history and humor. Logo by Alicia Qian
Latest episodes
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32 min
If You Can’t Take the Heat...
The City of Nashville gets hot. Really hot. So it makes sense that this is where the competition for the finals of USBG’s World Class Presented by Diageo would heat up. On this spe…
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38 min
Microbrew Killed the Macrobrew Star
Without a lot of fanfare in the early 1980s a fledgling cable channel called MTV launched in New Jersey. No one knew it at the time but it was the start of something big, a sea cha…
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58 min
Jack Who?
Women have been making cider and brandy for centuries - so where are they in the history books? A look at who gets written into and out of history through the lens of one of the mo…
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23 min
Satellite Bar - The Old Fashioned
A look inside the Old Fashioned episode with David Wondrich, author of "Imbibe" and Dale DeGroff, author of "The Craft of the Cocktail." Go behind the scenes of Back Bar and discov…
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47 min
An Old Fashioned Type of Drink
The story of the very first cocktail - where it came from, the strong opinions it breeds and what the way we drink it says about us.The word “cocktail” was first defined in print i…
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45 min
Bitter Sweet
An Italian favorite and the curious intersection of bitter times with bitter flavors. The Negroni doesn’t have a rise and fall and rise again story. It pops up here and there, pecu…
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46 min
Moscow, Inc.
Capitalism made the Moscow Mule - birthed it, shaped it and groomed it into the superstar it is today. But it also left behind a mystery that took 75 years to solve. What is the Mo…
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43 min
The Old Men and the Sea
One man invented it. Another one named it. And over the years their clashing personalities shaped the Hemingway Daiquiri. When Ernest Hemingway arrived in Cuba he was nearing the e…
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50 min
Exactly Approximately 3.2%
A poorly designed law that works and an expertly designed drink that sucks.When Prohibition was repealed in 1933 American drinkers had a lot of catching up to do. Tastes had change…
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48 min
A Good Fight
A countdown to WWI and a bright, bubbly festive drink named after a killing machine. As the great old powers of Europe marched toward war the conflict seemed inevitable. But was it…
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57 min
Greensward
Manhattan: an island, a drink and a park for the people.As New York City grew it needed a place. A place for people to walk, to play, to promenade, to relax. A place with green. Me…
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37 min
One Hundred Percent Virtue
A midseason spirit-free episode of Back Bar about questionable morality and the golden age of Hollywood. 1930s cinema was obsessed with purity and in young Shirley Temple, a blonde…
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43 min
Whenever You Need Somebody
Internet memes may have invaded our brains but they brought back the Aviation too.It was the early 2000s and cocktail bars were taking off along with a crazy little idea called the…
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51 min
Bottomless
The Bloody Mary and the curiously counter-culture history of brunch. Brunch was born over a hundred years ago and since then it’s been a lot of things to a lot of people: a reason…
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43 min
One Sour, Two Sweet
Rum, Sugar, Lime, Water. The daiquiri seems simple, right? Europeans came to the Caribbean and rum followed. Shortly after that we get the “holy trinity” of tropical drinks - rum,…
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52 min
Noble Experiments
The story of American prohibition: temperance, scapegoating, hypocrisy and their unlikely love child the Margarita. It’s 1920 and alcohol is now constitutionally illegal in the Uni…
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37 min
And What We Desire to Be
The Martini, the 1960s and how hand-in-hand they went wrong together. This week on Back Bar we explore the age of fancy cars, white picket fences, and Mad Men. It was the 1960s and…
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47 min
Legends
The story of the Sazerac, how it changed, adapted, evolved and kept pace with the rest of the cocktail world in the pilot episode of Back Bar. On the pilot episode of Back Bar host…
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39 sec
Coming Soon, From HRN: A Refreshing Cocktail of History and Humor
Back Bar is a rollicking deep dive into the events, phenomenon, relationships and human foibles that shaped the world’s most iconic drinks. Hosted by food and beverage writer Greg…