The World is a big place. Especially when you travel its 40,075km circumference visiting the best bars and distilleries in San Francisco, Kentucky, NYC, Ireland, Glasgow, Islay, London and some places in between. Our Bill Bewsher shares some of his experiences. Enjoy.

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After winning ‘Australia’s Best Training Program’ at the Australian Bartender Magazine Awards for the 3^rd year in a row, the trip started on a high. To gain this recognition just before setting off was amazing and I don’t think we could have felt any closer as a team – that is until we had spent three weeks on the road together.

From Sydney, we flew to San Francisco before moving onto the home of Bourbon: Kentucky. San Fran showed us a great time and in my opinion, it had some of the coolest bars of the whole the trip. A ‘must’ while in town is ‘Tommy’s’, the ubiquitous Mexican restaurant and home of the now famous ‘Tommy’s Margarita’. Following that, we had a quick jaunt around some of the city’s finest bars, managing to even sip cocktails in a legit prohibition era ‘speakeasy’. Leaving San Francisco in our dust, we pushed onto Kentucky. Arriving late at night, we immediately went to bed, excited at the thought of spending two full days with some of the world’s best whiskey.

Day one started early with breakfast in Bardstown. This was followed by a beautiful afternoon at Beam’s Clermont distillery before heading into Louisville to rock-out at the annual “Bourbon and Beyond” festival. “Bourbon and Beyond” featured some of the most amazing Bourbon activations we’ve ever seen and we can’t wait to share some of it with you in 2018. A definite highlight of the festival was sipping on a perfect Maker’s Old Fashioned as the sun went down behind Joe Bonamassa’s face-melting riffs. Day two in Kentucky goes down as probably one of the best distillery visits I’ve ever experienced. Having visited Maker’s a few years ago, it was brilliant to return and see all the changes that have been made since Suntory became involved. Apart from the same delicious bourbon, there are now art installations, a restaurant and a bat cave… (more on that later). Loretto is quite simply one of the most beautiful and tastiest places in existence.

After the comparatively relaxing days in bluegrass country, we flew into New York City for one of the most intensive bar tours ever; nearly 40 venues in three nights with a smattering of sightseeing thrown in for good measure. A personal highlight was visiting Pegu Club and PDT. It’s quite possible that if either of those venues didn’t exist, then nor would my career such is their influence on the global cocktail scene. Leaving JFK on the red-eye, we looked forward to a raucous weekend in Dublin. As soon as we touched down, we were spirited away to the historic Kilbeggan Distillery. Distilling whiskey since 1757, Kilbeggan still produces some of the good stuff and it was here we met our Global Irish Whiskey ambassador and all-round great bloke, John Cashman. John’s knowledge and passion was super-infectious, so expect to see a lot more Irish Whiskey popping up around Australia in the new year.

Next up, Scotland and our spiritual home, Islay. But not before we enjoyed a quick visit to Auchentoshan’s Glasgow-based distillery. On arrival, a quick nap on the visitor’s centre couch was in order before our tour started. Of which, was well-needed as it wasn’t long before we were opening up a single sherry cask destined for the super-delicious Auchentoshan Three Wood! Then it was back to the airport and onto the smallest plane in existence for our jump to Islay. Arriving on the Islay was more than a little special for everyone. Almost everyone in our team counts either one of the Bowmore or Laphroaig Single Malts as their favourite. So to land on the island and immerse ourselves in peaty deliciousness was a dream come true. I have far too many tales to mention here, so I’ll save them for another day!

After three stunning/rainy days on the Island, we were on the home-stretch. Taking a deep breath, we arrived more than a little dishevelled in the old centre of the universe, LONDON! Of all the cities and bar scenes we’ve visited, London still has the most influence on the trends we see in Australia. One such influence is the Lyan Group and visiting their venues was a fantastic experience. We can’t wait to bring the Lyan guys over here to Australia for a series of takeovers. As our time in London drew to a close, we rounded off the trip with a visit to one of our newest ‘family members’, Sipsmith Gin. A few G&Ts later and we were waist deep in botanicals… learning all about how the team lovingly craft every single batch by hand. It was brilliant to end the trip with one of the youngest distilleries in the world after already taking in some of the oldest.

All-in-all, the trip was an absolutely amazing experience. The opportunity for us to travel as a team allowed us to take it all in and develop ideas together. However, I must say that whilst there’s a lot of cool stuff going on out there, we really do bat well above our average here in Australia. Which made it even more refreshing and inspiring when comparing how we compete with the gold-standard of venues worldwide. Y’all can be well and truly proud of yourselves!

Bill.