E186 Livio Lauro

This week's guest is Livio LaRoe, who joins the show from his home in Las Vegas. Originally born and raised in California, Livio and his family moved back to Italy when he was 12 years old. After falling in love with the industry at a young age, Livio started working in various bars and restaurants while still living on the Italian island of Isquia. Eventually, Livio realized that he wanted to reach the pinnacle of his career choice, so he decided to move back to the US and specifically to Las Vegas where he has lived and worked for over the last two decades.

Livio is a drink expert and cocktail historian and has a library of over 1,400 beverage, hospitality, and cocktail themed books in his possession. Livio definitely keeps himself busy as he currently is employed by Southern Glazers, White & Spirits. He's a resident lecturer in the topics of alcoholic beverages at the University of Nevada. He is the founder and designer of the Euro Bar station and Livio has also authored several books and hosts a weekly show on YouTube called Master Your Glass.

We had a terrific time with Livio, so make sure you check the show notes for all the links and enjoy the show. All right, we are back with another episode of the industry podcast. I'm Kip, this is Dan. What's going on, buddy?

Not too much, just hanging out on this lovely Monday evening. We had sort of a sporadic schedule lately, so we apologize for that. Some of it's been our fault, some of it's been some last minute cancellations, some technical issues. We ran the gambit, but we're back.

We're back with another good episode this week and I think our schedule should be pretty normal going forward. This is springtime, so it tends to be a little bit more consistent. How's your weekend? It was good.

I checked out the local... Taco & Beer Festival. I heart beer festival at Binghamons this weekend. It was a pretty fun time.

They actually did a bang up job on that. So, congrats to the organizers of that festival who is really well organized. Two huge rooms, DJs in both rooms. They had two different rooms of beer pong.

They had a board game room. They had vintage arcade games. That was pretty fun. I did them on the dance floor.

You did? I noticed that. You might have a Russian hip squad at any point now, but... I didn't see too happy.

No, he did not. Let's go for a good time. Yeah. That was basically the weekend for us and we're moving into a word St.

Patrick's Day. Business should be picking up at the bars. If you're in the kitchen or waterloo area, you should come check out one of my bars. The bar in downtown Kitchener, the Speakeasy.

Check out at Sugar and Bar on Instagram to find out what's going on down there. We have live stand-up comedy every Wednesday night. We have Alex Price playing every Thursday night. We have Berlesque on the last Friday of every month.

So check out everything that's happening there. And you can check out the Instagram page to find out the password as well. Uptown, it's at Babylon Sisters Bar. Babylon Sisters Wine Bar up town.

Live music every Saturday, DJs every Friday. We're doing some speed dating. We're doing singles mixers, all kinds of different stuff going on there. So stay tuned to that page at Babylon Sisters Bar.

If you're visiting the Kitchen or Waterloo region. If you just like what we're doing here on the show, then you should follow us on your local whatever platform you listen to. Follow or subscribe, rate and review. That helps a great deal.

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He's fantastic. Check out all the stuff he's doing at Zac Hanna.co. Anything else you'd like to discuss? I know I'm pretty much covers everything.

Okay. Well, then it's time to bring in our guest. Leo Laro is with us right now. How you doing, Leo?

Hey, Kippa Dan. How are you? Excited to be here doing great. Perfect.

Thank you very much for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks for doing this, man. Of course, my pleasure. I was happy.

You know what? It was a last minute thing. And I think last minute things are always the coolest ones, if you ask me. So I'm ready to have a good chat.

Yeah, it's good. Yeah. And we were connected with you by our good friend and frequent guest, Yelena. Because you were also applying your trade in the Las Vegas region.

That is correct. That is correct. Yeah, Yelena's great people. I've known her for a long time and I love her work.

Yeah, she does. I can attest to that. She was very pleased to get you on the show. So big thanks to Yelena for helping with the booking.

Absolutely. And we will pay her nothing for that. So that's exciting for her. I love it.

So you are in Vegas now, but you started your career in Italy. Talk to us a little bit about that. Yeah, I did. It's an interesting story.

I guess I started my career in Italy, but I was inspired to have that career in America. When I was 10 years old, I was attending a family wedding. I was living in San Pedro, California at that time. My Italian family kept sodas away from the refrigerator.

All food had to come from. Mom had to cook it. All those things that you would imagine from an Italian family, they were all happening in my house. So I really didn't, my neighbor next door had Coke and Sprite and 7 up and all those things.

But I didn't. And so I just knew that I wasn't supposed to touch him. I went to this wedding and my dad and his brother, they kind of side-barred away from the dining room area or the ballroom area and they went to the bar. And this was 1980s California.

So I popped on the stool right next to them and I kept on talking and talking and my dad in order to get me to be quiet so that he could catch up with his brother. He tells the bartender to just make me something. And I just saw that glass hit the bar top and then the clingling of the ice and then the bubbles pouring in and then the red syrup and then the cherry and then the swiggly straw. And at that time I'm like, I don't know what this guy just did.

But when I grow up, I think I want to do that. That's great. Fast forward when I was 12, the whole family moves back to Italy. And I lived there until I was 27.

And I lived on the Amalfi Coast in a very cool island called Iscia. It's the neighborhood of Capri and it's just this gorgeous little thing. And that's where I started my career. Started bartending there, started as a bar back.

Worked my way up. Bartending there was very much still an old craft. You had your lead bartender that would teach you what he wanted to teach you and hide things that he didn't want you to see because there was always a fear that you would steal his profession. Which we definitely would, because that's what we do.

Yeah, exactly. There's not enough bars out there. But yeah, so worked at seven different places there. Working there was absolutely incredible.

Taught me a lot of stuff. And then the more I studied cocktails and the more I studied the cocktail world, the more I learned that America was the place to be. Because it's the birthplace of the cocktail. It's where most of the cocktails were cradled and became popular.

And so I told myself, if I want to be, I don't know, the best basketball player on the planet should not be playing in the NBA. Right. And so I jumped back on a plane and came to Vegas. And now I've been here for 23 years.

Wow. Is your family still back with that Italy then? Half and half. Yeah.

Big family in America, big family in Italy. Yeah. I like how you talked about the sound of the ice hitting the glass and stuff. Because I grew up in a hyper-religious family where nobody drank.

And so similar experience to yours where I didn't really have that experience when I was super young. And I remember the first time that I got to experience the sounds and the smells of crafting. Even if it was a non-alcoholic drink. The whole process was an explosion for your senses.

Yeah, so I love that. So a couple of things I really want to talk to you about that I think are super interesting about your specific career. One is the book collection, which unfortunately this is an audio format. I'm looking at it behind your head right now.

Behind Levio's head is in his library. And you have some what is it? 1400 books? Yeah, about 1400.

Yeah, I have encountered as of lately. But my rough estimate, the last time I counted I had 1200. I purchased a few more and then I purchased a collection of about 180. And then I purchased another handful here and there.

So 1400 is about right. Yeah. Books about cocktails and bartending and basically service industry related. Service industry, hospitality, bartending, cocktails, spirits, wine, beer, all those things.

I've referred to every one of them. Okay. I used to have a pretty big record collection. I had to sell a bunch of them when I was opening one of my bars, but I used to have 6000 plus vinyl records.

And there was a stretch where I remember that I did the same thing you did, bought a collection. And then it takes you a while to catch up. You can listen to a record every day and still not catch up. I finally did catch up, but it took a while.

But reading a book takes longer than listening to a record. Oh, it sure does. I think every author should just take their book and read it on YouTube. And on their voice so they can get you can get their voice.

And yeah, I think that would be amazing. But yeah, I referred to every one of them. Some of them, you know, I'll give you an example, the flavor Bible, right? It's a reference guide.

What goes well with cucumber? You look it up. It's not something you read. Yeah, you're not reading it on the Shitter.

Yeah. So how do you organize your books? Do you just organize them like where you have space or you're putting them in groups of like subject matter or by year or how's it work? In year subject matter from shortest to tallest.

Okay. Every section has a little number. Oh, you can't see this. There's a little number here.

So section 23 is dedicated to, in this case here, it's all my Mr. Boston's, right? Okay. And any book from that era that started in the first Mr.

Boston came out in 33, right? Smackering probation or not smackering probation, end of American probation. But then progressionally, as I get to the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, then I find the book that where the competitors of that, the books that were the competitors of that series and that same era and I'll put them right next to it. Right.

So that's the time when Mr. Boston and Angostura were the only two books you could get your hands on in America. If you wanted to learn anything and both of them were super branded. Right.

So they're more keepsakes than anything else, but it does teach you when you look at it. It's kind of nerdy, I guess, Kip, but when you start reading the books and comparing things, you start realizing when drinks became popular. Yeah. Actually, a series like the Mr.

Boston's right. So 1950 does not have a margarita in it and neither do any of the 18 ones, 17, whatever before that. But in 1951 and all after the margarita's in there. That's what I say.

The year the margarita became popular in America. It was 1950. Might have been invented before that, but it wasn't a thing. Right.

Until then. I don't think that's nerdy at all. Maybe I'm just a nerd, but I find that super fascinating. Like that's a cool thing to know.

So I don't want to, I mean, you got 1400 maybe of these books. And that's a really cool thing. Just a reference guide there. Is it could you tell our listeners maybe this is impossible to do, but like maybe give us three to five of what you think are either your favorites or the most essential or maybe the ones you leave through the most times.

Yeah. I'll say this. It's important. It's cool because even the vintage out of print ones are now available in, you know, a modern copy.

So you can get your hands on a on a on a on a on a Jerry Thomas book for 20 bucks these days. But I think the essential books are as follows. Obviously, it would be nice to have an 1862 Jerry Thomas book. And the reason why it's important is you know what drinks looked like before during the key revolution of the cocktail era, but before we had access to so many ingredients.

And there you'll see how many cocktails have gin in it and what the what people were drinking. I think it's a fantastic book. It had punches at the beginning, because punches were still like the real deal Holy field of beverage. But then I like his 1887 book, because in that one he moves over the punches to the back and he's basically saying, ah, nobody drinks this anymore.

We're going to put these cocktails in the front. And in 1887 he has the first, what I think is printing of the improved cocktail and the improved cocktail was basically the cocktail was Spirit Sugar Bitter's Water was an old fashioned the improved cocktail was Spirit Sugar Bitter's Water and sometimes a little dab of Orange Curacao or Maraschino. So the bartender started accessorizing the cock what was then called the cocktail again the cocktail was meant to be one recipe kind of like a mojito today. But because they started accessorizing it the bartender the guests as kind of a revolt, a lot of them would just say, I want to cocktail the old fashioned way.

Well, as you know, as you know, bar lingo is abbreviated lingo. Nobody orders a you know, Patron, silver, margarita, it's a mark. Right. So because of that they removed the word cocktail and they made it kind of a family of things in the old fashioned became the old fashioned.

Number three that I really like is the Savoy Cocktail book by Harry Craddock. And that one is because he credits bartenders. It's the first one where you see bartenders being credited. And in the US there was a cocktail historian by the name of Gazraigin Gary Regan Gazraigin.

He's no longer with us and he rests in peace but he said it the best he said, had the it's the most important book of the 1900s with the Savoy Cocktail book, because had it not been written, I would have never known about some very essential and cool cocktails that we still drink today. I'll give you an example, the side car, right. Some of the cocktails that he put forth in this book are now printed in probably 1200 of my other books, but they all started thanks to him writing that book so that's, that's number three. Number four is is a big read but it's punched by David Wandrich.

Right that one there just walks you through what I just walked you through but for those that want to learn more. I think the Craft of the Cocktail by Dale DeGraf is a really good book and not just because it's Dale and he's the king of cocktails here in the US, but it's because in it he just has, he touches all the marks of very good time tested cocktail practices, not the ones that started yesterday and now you're speculating and trying to figure out if learning this technique or investing your time in it is even going to be worth it because nobody's doing it anymore. Yeah, so that's kind of like how you would describe say the book liquid intelligence right like where it's it's very molecular it's crazy read it's a lot of work if you want to follow any of these principles you don't even know if that's going to be relevant in a couple years. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

So much and again that's when you use it as a reference guide right you know you read what you need to put it on the shelf and you refer to it once in a while if there's something new but you know I think all books have value at some point the question is when but those five there and I'm talking from a history geek standpoint right. So I learned cocktails just how to make cocktails what's a good book honestly I'm a big fan of my own book the 12 cocktails it basically boils everything down to 12 drinks and if you learn those 12 you know every cocktail method and style out there ratio. That's just an easy read to learn cocktails if you want to learn how to this all start and how to get where we are today in the tumultuous we went through two World Wars we went through the Spanish flu we went through the dust bowl in America we went through prohibition. So that's the way that we are from where we started with all that crap going on in the world.

Okay so let's talk about your books you have written two or three three okay so tell our listeners what those books are and how you would describe them. Yeah and where they can buy them that's right that's very important. And I will post links in the show know what you want to do I appreciate that so the first book that we wrote is the cocktails that the 12 cocktails that everybody should know we're just called the 12 cocktails and yeah it's a super simple book 84 pages and it basically explains all the day one if you're becoming a cocktail maker and I like to split that out if you're a cocktail maker slash bartender it doesn't teach you hospitality which if I'm sure you all agree is probably way more important than cocktail. Way more important and completely separate.

And nothing's proven that you might agree with this but nothing's proven that more than what happened during the pandemic when all of a sudden there was a million bartenders or cocktail makers on Instagram. Exactly. Yeah no absolutely so this one here is only about the cocktail right now how do you understand the recipes what's an order hey let's start by making a mocktail let's make a surely temple why because it's cheap to make it's easy to make it's my first drink but it's going to get you through the motions of the ice the two ingredients the mixing all that then we move on to a high high ball like a gin and tonic and we go to a low ball and then from there we get progression a little bit more right we start shaking and muddling and all those things. That's my first book my second book was born more because I I teach at UNLV as a spirits professor.

Sure I don't know why the word professor next to my name sounds really weird. Because you're a bartender. Professor is cool we do need these classes and I did want to talk about that but let's finish with the books. Yeah so that one there I before I even started at UNLV the some of the other professors that taught there would bring me in as a guest speaker and they're always we're recommending a book for spirits and everything I saw was either way too big you know like thick 300 page books and so I figured there was a need for a book that covered all the spirits but in like four pages per spirit vodka listen you don't know nothing about vodka right now you know zero the info in these four pages is going to get you the who went where why what a vodka and we're going to want to gin same topic so that book there is called the beverage engineer it also picks up at the end some cocktail topics which are basically synced in with the 12 cocktail system so you get both of those.

The third one we could probably do five podcasts on it's called the liquid legacy and the liquid legacy was born because one day I was window shopping on eBay and I saw a picture of six dudes that. That I'm sorry eight dudes that were holding on a couple in their hand they had a patch American patch on it and they were boarding a united American United Airlines flight and the picture was for some reason attracted me and I bought it at seven dollars. I flipped it on the back and it said that they were bartenders flying to England then a few days later because whatever eBay knows what I eat for dinner and all those things. I got in the feed another picture of these of six of three of those eight guys making drinks behind a bar and so I bought that one too and then I went and I traced back the story of these dudes and they had basically started the first bartender guild in America in 1948 which went in and out in the whole turn of stories in 2004 I became the national president of the guild.

So the picture of the eight dudes I was looking at I did not know who they were little did I know they were president predecessors of the they were my colleagues from 50 years ago in the guild. So is that what the book is about the tracing the history of these guys or anything that is for these guys and how what they contributed to the cocktail world and because remember when you were bartending in the 70s and 80s especially it wasn't about oh let me show you my new let me show you how I smoke a mojito or you want to drink or you want this vodka drink or let me try to convert you to a gin drink there was none of that it was you want this drink I'm going to probably I'm going to make it the best I can with the biggest smile on my face it was real. Oh you want vodka peach knobs and cranberry juice coming right up I'll make you the best vodka peach knobs cranberry juice drink you want it and I just love those stories so the story has so many twists and turns that it's pretty cool but that's basically the liquid legacy. So what do you go about researching that story like what was the process and researching the history behind these guys.

So I'm pretty lucky because I have 1400 books here right now but I one of the one of the you know I think maybe 20 of the 1400s are old program books of the guild from the 40s 50s and 60s. Okay I was able to trace back some cottos that they made and then as I would trace back the cocktails I would find stories related to it that would be cool. To keep it not just about a history story right like hey let's talk about the scottos that this guy did right and this guy did. And then obviously I also have access to the library at UNLV which goes back to you know the 1800s where you can start researching people or things.

I'll give you one quick story on this one and just so to give me an analogy I don't know how it is at home with you but in America right now there's a drink called the Saturn that's really popular. Every Tiki bar has it and because Tiki Tiki bars are becoming more and more popular. You know now normal bars carry it. It's like having a Mai Tai you don't have to have a Tiki bar to have a Mai Tai but you it's a good drink.

So the Saturn has become super super popular right the Saturn was created by one of the members of the guild for in 1967 and for the past probably eight nine years it's been growing and growing as the bees knees of the Polynesian style cocktails. In my book I discovered in going through those archives I discovered a book from 1965 called the Ponce de Leon and the Ponce de Leon was done by the same guy Joe Galcini and but it came two years earlier and it's the same recipe but he replaced an apricot like you were with peach tops. And in the first one had peach tops in it so now if you're a nerd you love the story that the Saturn was obviously this guy's greatest hit but it was a trial and error of two years in taking the Ponce de Leon to become the Saturn right. Thanks.

Yeah and improve the name too. The name has another story too so the drink when he changed it he called it the when he changed it the first time he called it the x 15 but the which was the fastest plane at the time coincidentally the during that era a x 15 crashed and the pilot passed away. So out of sensibility he changed it to the Saturn. Yeah so that's a that's a weird should I do and the reason why I do that guys is because a lot of the cocktail topics out there hospitality topics are covered pretty well and I want to do another book on.

I have to find something itchy otherwise I don't have fun well yeah like and also who would give it to you anymore right because you said there's a ton of books about pretty much everything now right like so you're finding a niche and that's cool. I find that's the stuff super fascinating and especially when you find an angle I tell the stories of the guys who came like who invented the bartender's guild like that's amazing story and so how did it come to be that you ended up becoming president of the bartender's guild. Oh wow that's a funny story the guild in the 90s was at its very lowest in a really bad place screwed up I blame the cosmopolitan. The guild was really cool in the 60s 70s 50s and but the members and it was huge and thriving right but the members were getting older and only members were signing up.

So by the 90s it found itself with a bunch of old members literally sadly passing away one week every every week they were losing a new another one right so it was in a bad place so one when when the my predecessor of a president really was part of that older group and he wasn't really doing such a great job and to the one point he just stopped replying to everybody and having to answer to anybody and so I flew to Italy on vacation and I didn't I wasn't at the meeting but I brought up in the agenda hey we've got to address the president here like this can't go on this way. Something's got to change either the guy gets impeached either the guy responds or gets impeached right literally was my words at the time. The meeting happens and I'm in Italy and all of a sudden I get a text message from one of my friends and it goes congratulations you are the new interim national president of the SPG. It was a hot potato nobody wanted to do that.

Who are they going to give it to the guy in the room the guy who's not in the room we can't fight it. Well and the guy who's probably the most pissed off about it right. He's like you don't like it you take it. Exactly so I was interim for one year and then in 05 I got elected officially and then reelected and it's only a two term thing just like the United States president two term things so I did my two terms and during those two terms we opened 19 chapters we had five more in petition.

I was very lucky that the cocktail scene was becoming so cool and people needed a place to go to hang out with other like minded hospitality professionals. And so that was a that's how it all happened. That's crazy and so like what. How do you describe the work that the guild does like what is what is its purpose.

The purpose of the guild is two things. Increase the awareness of the cocktail and how it's culturally relevant relevant historical and tradition to the way we are the way we live. And number two enhance the image of the bartender which as you know, permission in America destroyed the image of the bartender before prohibition. And they had the very highest status in society.

The bartender the judge, the lawyer, the banker, the editor were all at the same status level because the bartender was super influential also super knowledgeable because there was no internet at the time and so the bartender or the town or owner or saloon keeper, all those names, dealing with different people had an extra set of knowledge that wasn't necessarily found everywhere then prohibition destroyed it. And so after prohibition, the bartender was during prohibition, the bartender was a drug dealer. Right after prohibition, the the the really, really good bartender is during prohibition fled the country. Right.

And so now we had rookie bartenders that were still doing okay, but can I hear just a quick question that I'll forget if I don't like because I know you mentioned earlier that US was the home of the cocktail and I've read books that say London was right. So is this because like the best bartenders from prohibition era moved to London? A little bit of that. A little bit of that.

There was a little back and forth because some of the prohibition best bartenders in America and some of the pre-provision best bartenders in America actually came from London before that but they fine tuned their craft in America. Okay. The reason why America invented the cocktail is because it was America that took the punch bowl, which was gin, which was spirit sugar water, spice and citrus. Punch is five ingredients, right?

Right. And America said screw it, right in the turn of the century in the in the mid 1800s, I should say, and said, nobody wants to drink from this bowl full of stuff. We want cocktails to be mono serve. Right.

You'd have your Negroni while you have your mojito. Well, you have your men in doing that the whole game change. You need a new class where you needed ice, right? America introduced ice at a global level to the cocktail.

So the India invented the punch. If I got this right, India invented the punch England dispensed the knowledge of the punch all over the world, including America. America picked up the punch turned it into cocktails and dispensed the knowledge all over. Okay.

That's super fascinating. Sorry. I don't know if you remember what you were at when I really interrupted you, but I just wanted to talk about that, but you were talking about the guild and what the guild does. Yeah.

Yeah. And so the the bartender image post-provision was really bad because it was a blind leading the blind right the bartenders that bartender during prohibition were now opening bartending schools and teaching bartenders how to bartend and they weren't pros it the pros again most of them had left the country. Those people, most of them never came back. They felt exiled by prohibition.

So they never came back to America. So for 40, 50 years after that, we have some challenges in finding good ingredients and finding really good bartenders. And so the guild's mission is to create awareness in the fact that bartenders are important in the establishment. We're not just a bunch of drunks in the corner there.

You know, we do very similar roles that the chef does. All respect for chef. I have a lot of chef friends. We do very similar jobs with the chefs have the luxury of doing it behind the scene.

Bartenders have to do it in front of guests. Right in your face. Why does the chef get this amazing status and the bartenders, a, you know, second citizen? So that's kind of, I guess, my interpretation of how the guild helps it.

And how does it do it through? Obviously, a lot of courses that teach bartenders new skills, cocktail competitions, competitions, a lot of people laugh at them. They're very cool because you really get to learn from other people that are behind the bar every day. Some of the practices they do, all in one room at the same time without having to bar hop and hope that what if I bar hop to your bar and I spent two hours there and for the next two hours, people are just drinking beer.

How am I going to learn that technique? If I go to see you in a cocktail competition, I know you're bringing something interesting. I'm going to learn it, you know. So that's the guild in a nutshell.

And do you hear knowledge of these guilds exist in other countries or is it mainly a US thing? Oh yeah, no, yeah, they exist. Yeah. The first guild was started.

I want to say, don't quote me, but it was the, yeah, it started in England, the international barkeepers union, it then shut down and then it reopened. But Cuba had one before us 1929, I believe. But there's about, I don't know, about 100 guilds across the world. Yes, Canada had one because I wouldn't even know.

And this is what I do for a living. Yeah, there's Canadian bartenders. Okay, well, they're not doing a great job. Yeah, I guess not.

Yeah. Well, maybe we need to hook you up with our guild here and then you can teach them a lesson or two. Yeah, because it's a super cool thing and it doesn't need to be now. There was a stretch where, and maybe we can talk with this for a little bit, there was a stretch where, um, I don't know when this happened, you have the knowledge of the history, so you will probably have to explain this to me, but like, where all of a sudden we moved into startender mode.

And they're like the bartender as the star again, and you're talking about the guild, but like putting the bartender at the level that they deserve to be at. But do you find that it went too far with the startender whole idea? I never got where it should have been. It didn't go far enough.

Okay. The guild in general, right? And I think most people would agree. We're not saying that the bartender needs more exposure by saying that they need to be called stars and they need to be on the cover of the magazine and, you know, they need to be whatever cocky to guests that want a rum and coke and they're better than that.

The status of the bartender means basically having more resources available to them and treating them better, you know, I don't know, giving them some some of the benefits that management level people in the hospitality business get the bartenders don't. I don't know why, right? If you're the assistant general manager and you get a parking spot, I think the bartender gets the parking. You know, I think those kinds of things.

Yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah. Okay. Those kinds of things.

The star tender thing. I honestly, I've personally had to fight it for many years, and to this day still do. It's, I think, triggered more from marketing companies, magazines, publications, right, where, you know, they're always looking for the big title and a lot or the big, you know, the clickbaity piece of news. And so sometimes you'll just show up as a bartender to an interview and they have to say that, you know, like, well, we're here with 100% badass, unique, amazing, incredible star tender master of the universe.

Leave your laura. Yeah. And there's, and so I think that's happened more to them. Now, of course, vanity is everybody's favorite sin.

Right. So if you take a 25 year old kid, a 26 year old kid, so many of the early 30s and you tell them, Hey, we're going to call you a star and we're going to put you on the cover of a magazine. What do you think they're going to say? Right.

Okay. That's great. So I'm not triggered from the bartenders now. But you, what I think, if I'm getting you right here, you think that all this recognition in the end is good because it does elevate the role of bartender to the point that we needed to be at.

It's good. So long as the bartenders don't let it get to their head. Right. Right.

So, and that's the, that's the downfall of not elevating. They're not, I didn't see them get elevated. Now they are, but for many years of that movement, I didn't see them get elevated. I just saw them get into celebrity status.

Right. Which is not what, so yeah, and there's a difference there. So when you versus knowledge know how, you know, all right. So like how do you feel about these shows like drink masters or whatever?

Is that the name of the Netflix trick masters? Like is that, do you think that's a positive effect on the industry or a negative? I do. I think it's got a positive effect.

It brings more people into the, to the trade. I don't think there's anybody that is either a student of bartending that wants to become a bartender or just a general public person. Right. Anybody interested in cocktails, no matter who you are, what walk of life.

If you've been in one bar, you know that Star Tender is a show and it's designed to showing elements of bartending that aren't necessarily every day. So you know that. Right. Just like, you know, just like a Formula One race on TV isn't the same way you drive your kid to school in the morning.

Right. But on the flip side, if there are the bads, it's not how people meet each other. That is exactly. Exactly.

But yeah, it's a good analogy right there. But the, but those who instead like are, I don't, listen, I, I love, I don't want to just make gin and tonics in my life. If you have those people, then they can watch that show and say, Oh, there is a whole other side of this profession that I didn't know about and it does elevate it. That's my thought.

It all goes back to people's perception and most people are smart, you know. Right. I agree with that. Okay.

We're going to let you go soon because you give us a lot of time and like honestly, Olivia, I could talk to you for fucking a full day. You're super fascinating. Yeah. So when we stop recording, I'm going to hit you up for being a regular guest.

So get ready for that. But let's talk about your YouTube show before we let you go and tell us about it. Tell our listeners what that's all about. Yeah.

I'm going to talk about your glass, YouTube master, your glass. And it's basically a show on cocktails and spirits, but we always try to find some sort of a tradition or a culture tied to it. So I love to talk about the drinks, but if, but we always look for what's the story? How did people drink this?

What does it look like at home? Right? Where it was invented? We always add that little curve of it because we want to be, we want to be a little bit more.

We want to give some passionate info about these drinks because remember, I don't know, the white lady is a gin version of a side car and the side car is a brandy version of the white lady, but the two drinks have completely different cultures and traditions. So we can't just boil it down to that to those little things. Yeah. The videos are usually short, eight, 12, 14 minutes.

If there's a cocktail inventor, I will bring them on the show. So I've had Tony Abugan with the cable car. I've had Decepica Tzollis with the Trinidad Sauer. I've had Marco who invented the chartreuse swizzle.

If there's a cocktail that has become cool in the past 20, 25 years and the inventor is still out there, I bring on the show and we talk about drinks. So that's master glass in a nutshell. I love it. This is like a call back to the beginning of the show when you were talking about the Savoy cocktail book and being the first book that featured bartenders and that's exactly what you're doing on your YouTube show now, which is amazing.

You clearly have such a keen sense of the history of the whole thing, which I love and you're obviously passionate about it. Unbelievable. And keep doing what you're doing. This is exactly what the industry needs.

And I'm not joking. I can talk to you for hours about all the historical stuff. So tell our listeners where they can follow you, find you, give all the details. Yeah.

Okay. So my YouTube Joe is master glass is YouTube.com forward slash master glass, of course. My Instagram personal is at leave your laro. That's l i v i o l a u r o all one word.

My Facebook is there too, but Facebook is a little more private. My Instagram for master glass is just that at master your glass. And then I also have a cool bar station, which we could probably talk about in the next podcast. And that is at your bar station, all three of those on Instagram.

Right. We didn't even get into that. That's why we need to have you back. So, but it's like once we get going on this shit, like I find this historical stuff so fascinating and you clearly do as well.

So please come back. Please come back. Oh, yeah. Thanks, Libby.

I really appreciate it. Amazing. And yeah, thanks again. Thanks for having me.

Have a good day.