Podcast
Skurnik Unfiltered
Hosted by Skurnik Wines & Spirits · EN
No reservations required—listening to these conversations feels like you've been invited to pull up a chair and share a glass with some of the most remarkable dinner guests, giving you a level of access that was previously gatekept for those in the know.
Skurnik Unfiltered is a weekly podcast that curates deep conversations with some of the finest winemakers, distillers, and industry leaders about the world of wines, spirits and hospitality. The show is hosted by Harmon Skurnik of Skurnik Wines & Spirits, a leading importer and distributor of the finest terroir-driven beverages crafted at a human scale.
Episodes are guest-hosted by sommeliers and experts in the subfields of wine, spirits, sake, and specialty beverages.
Skurnik Unfiltered is recorded at Skurnik Wines & Spirits headquarters in the Flatiron District of New York City.
10episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Alex Clark
6d ago00:35:17Tap to summarize"As a brand, you have to have an identity. It's easy to just make products, but why you exist is much more important that what you produce. The "why" for us is recreating this classic New York rye style that hadn't been around for over 100 years." – Alex ClarkThe Battle of Brooklyn began over stolen fruit in a neighborhood watermelon patch, a piece of borough history that now inspires one of New York’s most distinctive spirits.In this week's episode, Whiskey Specialist James Pellingra talks with Alex Clark, founder of Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton Distillery. Alex traces his path from London DJ to the center of the New York classic cocktail boom, sharing how his hospitality roots and love of American Revolutionary history inform his approach to distilling.The conversation centers on Fort Hamilton’s reason for existence: bringing back the pre-Prohibition style of New York rye whiskey. Long before corn subsidies made bourbon dominant, rye was a true foundational spirit of American distilling. Alex breaks down what makes an Empire Rye Whiskey and what it means to resurrect a distillate that the US government sought to eradicate.Alex also reintroduces Fort Hamilton’s New World Gin. Built on a New York corn base, it balances cucumber with fresh watermelon, a direct tie to that historic battlefield skirmish located just a block from the modern distillery in Industry City. BCB is held at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn on June 9th and 10th. The Skurnik bar will be open both days from 11am-7pm in Building 7 for you to meet our spirits specialists and visiting distillers. Register for BCB here.Skurnik Wines & SpiritsFollow us on Instagram
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BONUS: What to expect from Skurnik at BCB
2w ago00:26:15Tap to summarizeThe biggest spirits event of the year is right around the corner. Bar Convent Brooklyn is an annual 2-day festival of tastings and seminars from the best in the spirits business.In preparation for Skurnik’s third appearance at BCB, we’re giving you a bonus episode inside our spirits portfolio with Adam Schuman (Spirits Portfolio Director) and Amanda Elder (Spirits Content & Education Manager). In this episode, they survey the beverage landscape from the early 2010s cocktail boom to the spike in demand for consumer education during COVID lockdown, and how Skurnik is meeting the moment in a world still dealing with ripple effects from the pandemic and new challenges brought by trends and the global economy.BCB is held at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn on June 9th and 10th. The Skurnik bar will be open both days from 11am-7pm in Building 7 for you to meet our spirits specialists and visiting distillers. Register for BCB here.Automatically generated transcripts often make mistakes. Find a corrected one here.Skurnik Wines & SpiritsFollow us on Instagram
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Noah Dorrance
3w ago00:27:58Tap to summarize"If you're really tapped into what wine is, giving back is a very natural extension of that. You realize that wine exists in this harmony with its environment, and if you're not giving back out to that environment, you're like the dead end in the ecosystem. It's important that the ecosystem keeps moving around and that good keeps flowing in all directions." – Noah DorranceNoah Dorrance's philosophy is clear and consistent: wine is connection. Paying close attention to the weather and the rhythms of the seasons connects him to the health of the planet. Donating a portion of his revenue to local nonprofits helps him connect with his community in and beyond the Sonoma Coast. And involving his wife and teenage kids in the Reeve Wines and BloodRoot projects brings their family closer together.In this week's episode, New York sommelier Mackenzie Khosla guest hosts Noah for a discussion over a bottle of Reeve Wines 'Rice-Spivak' Pinot Noir. Together they reflect on ways to find connection, generosity, and intentionality through the making and sharing of wine.Automatically generated transcripts often make mistakes. Find a corrected version here.Skurnik Wines & SpiritsFollow us on Instagram
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Shane Fraser
4w ago00:29:18Tap to summarize"Perfection in a spirit is to do things very consistently and don't change things. I'm certainly not perfect, but I think what we're doing at the distillery is close to the best whisky I've made for a long, long time. It's grain to glass, and it's all grown and made in New York State." – Shane FraserTenmile Distillery in Wassaic, NY is making the closest thing to Scotch outside of Scotland, thanks to their secret weapon, the acclaimed master distiller Shane Fraser from Aberdeen. Tenmile's focus is on American Single Malt Whisky, a relatively unheard-of and misunderstood category only officially defined as recently as 2025. In this episode with whisk(e)y expert James Pellingra, Shane describes the ins and outs of producing single malt whisky, the advantages of aging whisky in California Pinot Noir casks, and how he defines perfection in a category still establishing its identity.Automatically generated transcripts often make mistakes. Find a corrected version here.Skurnik Wines & SpiritsFollow us on Instagram
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Alice Jun
May 400:31:48Tap to summarize"Sool is an ancient style of rice wine. It has over two-thousand years of documented history. Our style is distinctly influenced by the style of brews that I grew up with—a wilder, more natural, more gastronomical style of Korean wine. And for those who are curious about going deeper, there is always something more." – Alice JunAlice Jun remembers makgeolli as an important ingredient of her upbringing in the '90s in her Los Angeles Korean American community. Her father, a first-generation immigrant, taught her how to brew the mixed-culture sedimented rice wine at home. His style, brewed from brown rice, was rustic and traditional—much stronger and drier than the lighter, aspartame-sweetened version exported to grocery store shelves, which many in the Korean diaspora had become used to.In this week's episode, Alice tells the story of how she went from bootlegging her father's recipe from her NYC shoebox apartment to starting Hana Makgeolli, the first craft makgeolli brewery in the US, and how the explosion of Korean pop culture and a rapid consumer-driven appetite for craft Asian beverages is changing the landscape of American gastronomy.Automatically generated transcripts often make mistakes. Find a corrected version here.Learn more about the different types of sool.Skurnik Wines & SpiritsFollow us on Instagram
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Ricardo Peñalba
Apr 2700:32:00Tap to summarize“Wine has always been in change, in movement. The wine that we drink now is not the same wine that was drunk a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. For a revolution, you have to go back to the past to see what you have missed, and then bring it back.” – Ricardo Peñalba More than a winemaker, Ricardo Peñalba is a self-proclaimed "wine ideologist." When he's out walking the rows of his biodynamic vineyards in Ribera del Duero, he's thinking obsessively about wine and how it connects humans to our shared history and humanity.In this episode with Max Working, Ricardo shares a bottle of his Ojo Gallo from Finca Torremilanos and explains the region's ties to this traditional clarete style of wine, with an inspiringly philosophical perspective.Automatically generated transcripts often make mistakes. Find a corrected version here.Skurnik Wines & SpiritsFollow us on Instagram
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Chris Mullineux
Apr 2000:38:39Tap to summarize"If a wine is trying to copy somewhere else or be something else, it might taste good, but it needs to have an authenticity and a sense of place to it, and it must be balanced and beautiful to drink. If a wine can put those two concepts together, for me, it's a perfect wine." – Chris Mullineux For decades, South Africa’s Swartland region was dominated by industrial farming cooperatives that pumped out massive amounts of inexpensive bulk wine and diluted any hint of terroir. It wasn’t until the turn of the millennium that a fresh generation took notice of the gems right under their noses: forgotten old-vine vineyards and, thanks to hundreds of millions of years of tectonic activity, the oldest soils of anywhere on the planet. Chris and Andrea Mullineux, alongside pioneers like Adi Badenhorst and Eben Sadie, helped redefine the region with stunning Chenin Blancs and Syrahs, proving that Swartland wines could indeed deliver a distinct sense of place.Now their movement has grown beyond the Swartland to the broader Western Cape. Independent winemakers from Stellenbosch to Hemel-en-Aarde are dialing in their farming to express a uniquely South African terroir, one that in Mullineux’s case “tastes like sunshine.” In this episode, Chris Mullineux joins Desiree Russo for a flight of wines from three of his projects: Kloof Street, Mullineux, and Leeu Passant. They discuss regenerative farming, geek out on soil, and survey the unexpected varieties that may come to define the next chapter of South African wine.Automatically generated transcripts often make mistakes. Find a corrected one here.Skurnik Wines & SpiritsFollow us on Instagram
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Daday Suárez
Apr 1300:33:58Tap to summarize"Everything that we do is very pure. We are mingled or entangled with other species, with the trees, with everything. That's one of the purposes of this tequila: not only producing tequila, but maintaining the harmony and equilibrium with the surroundings." – Daday SuárezDaday Suárez is a completionist. When he was wrestling with questions of reality and being, he got a degree in philosophy. When he wanted to order wine at restaurants with more confidence, he became a certified sommelier. When he was looking for the perfect tequila, he used his degree in mechanical engineering to pave a road to the top of a mountain, then built the world’s highest elevation tequila distillery, Alto Canto.Of all he has accomplished, Alto Canto is Daday’s crown jewel. He built it with a lasting legacy in mind—of quality tequila, yes, but also as a promise to nature. The distillery is entangled with native flora whose wild yeasts spontaneously ferment only organic, mature agaves. Coyotes and armadillos roam across the forested Sierra del Tigre range. Bees swarm, drawn to the vinaza, or liquid byproduct from distillation, which gets repurposed as fertilizer for local avocado farmers. In this episode with Justin Lane Briggs, Daday shares his thoughts on what it takes to craft the highest quality distillate with as little intervention as possible, and where additive-free tequilas like Alto Canto fit in the flashy league of premium craft Mexican spirits.Automatically generated transcripts often make mistakes. Find a corrected one here.Skurnik Wines & SpiritsFollow us on Instagram
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Bernhard Ott and Hans Reisetbauer
Apr 600:26:13Tap to summarize“Normally you have a best friend, and sometimes you see each other on weekends, but we are in the same business. We feel lucky. You can’t find it a second time in the world.” – Bernhard OttIf you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. History is full of contemporaries who share visions of success, who, instead of competing, mentor and encourage the other to become greater than one could alone. Warhol and Basquiat. Lewis and Tolkien. Gauguin and van Gogh. Today in the world of craft wine and spirits, that pair is winemaker Bernhard Ott and distiller Hans Reisetbauer.Born into farming families in Lower and Upper Austria respectively, they followed a common thread of honest farming, pure fruit, and quality beverages that eventually brought them together. Like looking in a mirror, they immediately bonded over their shared interests and identical values. Now after 25 years of friendship, their collaborative approach to farming, fermentation, and life has produced the most elite wine and spirits in Austria.In this episode, they share their philosophies on biodynamic farming, their obsessive pursuit of pure fruit, and why doing things the right way doesn’t have to mean doing it the hard way when you always have a friend to lean on.Automatically generated transcripts often contain mistakes. Find a corrected version here.Skurnik Wines & SpiritsFollow us on Instagram
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Sergio Vivanco
Mar 3000:37:13Tap to summarize"I'm very proud to be Mexican. I love my people, I love my country, and we love what we are doing. We do our part with passion, with honesty, with everything that we can with our hands. We are people from the field. We are rancheros, and we feel proud of this. It's our task." – Sergio VivancoFor five generations, the Vivanco family has been growing agave in Arandas, in the Jalisco highland plateau, though they didn't establish their own destilería until 1994. Registered as NOM 1414, they soon launched their own family label, Viva México Tequila. The distillery built an enviable reputation, and the family took on contracts for brands seeking purity, quality, and transparency.Now co-owner and one of four master distillers, Sergio Vivanco has become one of the most respected figures in the tequila industry. In this episode, tequila educator and advocate Marissa Paragano sits down with Sergio to taste five expressions from Viva México and Plantador, discussing the production details that make NOM 1414 tequilas distinct, Sergio's five-step tasting method, and how a culture of multi-generational craftsmanship delivers excellent results.Automatically generated transcripts often make mistakes. Find a corrected version here.Skurnik Wines & SpiritsFollow us on Instagram
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