We continue our 2025 Imbibe 75 coverage with Natasha Bahrami, owner of The Gin Room in St. Louis and organizer of the touring Gin World events across the U.S.
Natasha Bahrami helped turn the Midwest into gin country via her St. Louis bar, The Gin Room. For this episode, we continue our 2025 Imbibe 75 coverage with Bahrami about gin’s enduring appeal, and about her ongoing efforts to spread the love of gin nationwide via her series of Gin World events, taking place in cities across America.
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Paul Clarke
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Radio Imbibe from Imbibe magazine. I'm Paul Clarke, Imbibe’s editor in chief. Thanks for joining us as we continue our journey through this year's Imbibe 75, our annual list of the people and places who will change the way we drink in the years ahead.
If you've been a reader of Imbibe for any length of time, or if you're just the kind of person who's always curious about cocktails, then you probably noticed long ago that gin is enjoying a very particular moment. Which is fitting perhaps, because gin occupies a very distinctive part of the spirits world and in a way, gin’s the spirit that offers distillers and bartenders almost limitless creative opportunities.
In the world of gin, you may quickly realize that gin perhaps has no more enthusiastic cheerleader and supporter than Natasha Bahrami, one of this year's imbibe 75 people to watch, and the owner of the Gin Room in Saint Louis, a bar dedicated to the spirit. But the joy Natasha finds in gin is infectious, and for several years she's been sharing that enthusiasm with audiences in Saint Louis, Washington, DC and beyond, via a series of Gin World events featuring educational programs, tastings and more, all in an aim to spread a greater understanding and enjoyment of gin. As we get into the heart of 2025, Natasha is increasingly taking Gin World on the road with a series of events and markets all across the country with upcoming events in places ranging from Baltimore and Oklahoma City to Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. For this episode, we’re chatting with Natasha Bahrami to talk more about gin and Gin World and what she has planned for 2025. Before we get started, though, a quick word from this episode sponsor. Don't miss the Charleston Wine and Food Festival March 5th through 9th in Charleston, South Carolina. Tickets are available for a variety of events, including the culinary village March 7th, eighth and ninth at Johnson Hagood Stadium. Dozens of wineries, breweries, distillers, chefs and demonstrations make this a delicious playground. Head to Charleston wine and food dot com for tickets and all the information. Charleston Wine and Food Festival, where food and culture meet.
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Paul Clarke
Natasha, welcome to Radio Imbibe.
Natasha Bahrami
So excited to be here.
Paul Clarke
We've, of course, had you in imbibe in the past in a piece related to gin, because in addition to owning a gin bar called, appropriately enough, the Gin Room in Saint Louis, you've also been an organizer for Gin World events in multiple cities for several years now. We're coming back to you now because apparently gin never sleeps. And for 2025, you have big plans for a gin in America. Before we get into all of this stuff that's coming up in the year ahead, we want to give people some background, some perspective. So let me throw you the great big softball question. Why gin? What is it about gin that grabs you so much and makes you so enthusiastic about spreading the good word of gin?
Natasha Bahrami
Well, gin is just that spirit. It's exciting. There are no rules, right? So it can be a range of flavor profiles where it could be almost anything that you want it to be. So I've always been outside of the box, Right? And I feel like gin is that exciting spirit that can be outside of the box. If I blind tasted something, there could be something savory enough that's almost on an agave vegetal spectrum. There could be something like running through a forest with your mouth open. There can be beautiful florals. Right? And so it's so wonderful to have a spirit where it's not one size fits all, right? It can be so expressive where it can move have cocktails mold to it, or it can be fluid and be able to be playful instead of just stuck in a Oh, I have to like, drink this straight or to drink this in this certain cocktail. You can be playful and do what you want with the category of gin. And that range in spectrum is one of the most attractive things that is gin. Every gin is not for everybody, and that's okay. But there is a gin for everybody. And we're working hard to bring that gin to you.
Paul Clarke
We'll get into the work that you have coming up. But up to now, in addition to celebrating gin, there's also been a big educational undercurrent in what you do. Why is that? Why do you think that gin maybe needs that or it can benefit from this educational component?
Natasha Bahrami
One of the most important things that we have found is that gin has to be you have to be able to engage with it, learn about it. It's what excites you. There are so many experiences that people have had that if you're not willing to put out the education and reteach something that wasn't fully experienced in a way that was joyful. We have to continue to make these experiences that we call education. Some of them are engaging with bars and restaurants. Some of them are really nerdy 30 gin blind tasting seminars which let you really see the range and spectrum of the category of gin and there's got to be something in there that makes you say, Oh my gosh, I loved this. And that's what we're trying to create all over the United States.
Paul Clarke
And, you know, you look around the country and I'm thinking just of the United States right now. And you can find multiple events based around bourbon, scotch whisky festivals, tequila festivals, agave spirits festivals, rum fest. How is your work with gin helping to address that same kind of need and enthusiasm for the spirit category?
Natasha Bahrami
I love the whiskey fests. I love the tequila platforms. And it's important because they get to meet makers, they get to meet producers, they get to see the real people behind what is being made. And that's something that our gin, we gin festivals have hit on so hard that, yes, you can try the spirit and enjoy the spirit. But there's stories behind these gins, these distilleries that are so deep and so wonderful and the people behind them are very passionate about what they do. And it really does help connect maybe gin likers to become gin lovers in a way, when you really connect with something, there is slightly a few more years behind the kind of love story that has happened between whiskey and the Americans and tequila is now starting to create that love story. Gin has been present for a very long time in the United States, but we need to recreate that kind of love story between gin and both consumers and industry. And so the education from festivals or little mini gin weeks that we do around the United States are really built to create that one on one kind of touch where you can really say, Hey, I don't really know much about this, or maybe I didn't really like this in the first place. But the way this is presented, it's approachable, it's something that you can come to without it having to be overwhelming. 7000 people at an event, right? You come in and you're like, I got to engage on almost like a grassroots level that really makes it magical.
Paul Clarke
And usually when I'm thinking both of consumer events, but maybe even more particularly bar events and bartender oriented events, industry events, when you see gin education, gin events going on, typically it's a very brand oriented. It'll be a single gin brand or a single liquor company that has a couple of, you know, gins in their portfolio. Why is it important to look at it in this wider angle into how people get to talk to different people, get to taste different things and have a wider range of experiences and compare and contrast.
Natasha Bahrami
It's something we've learned in our ten years of taking both the gin room and the gin world is that gin needs to be talked about as a category and really being able to move from city to city with multiple brands that have multiple range and spectrum of flavor profiles is almost the key to success. On the category of gin, because you're letting a guest engage on a full spectrum instead of this one portfolio or this one brand, you're not just talking about brand connections, you're talking about category connections. And so learning about gin on a broader scale is something that is going to allow people to become more of gin enthusiasts rather than just, I liked this brand because a celebrity is behind it, you know? It really allows you to get into what gin is and the people who are behind it. And that's why it is so important that we are now approaching the category of gin as exactly that, as a range of brands, as a range of flavors to make sure that we hit a larger demographic base, because not everybody likes everything, whether you're somebody who loves stiff juniper forward martinis or, if you like, a gimlet or rickey, something more citrusy and beautiful but still shows off the gin. It allows you to kind of understand the spirit that has the largest range of flavors that really exists at this point.
Paul Clarke
You were based in Saint Louis, as we noted but your efforts to introduce gin to a wider audience extend far beyond the heartland. What have you been doing in terms of the gin education events? And then where are you going in the year ahead?
Natasha Bahrami
We decided to just jump into the deep end. And so we hit Washington, D.C., we hit Minneapolis, we hit Kansas City, and we hit Milwaukee. And boy, did we get to go into the smaller cities, the cities that don't get, they're not the New York, they're not the San Francisco. They're not the Miami's. But they are exploding. They're exploding on the hospitality scene. They're exploding on the bar scene. There's James Beard nominations everywhere. There's award winning bars all over the Midwest. And these smaller markets that a little bit of attention to these markets is quite explosive. It's really we're using the model of opening a gin bar in Saint Louis, Missouri, which is quite the beer and bourbon town. And we've turned into one of the largest growth markets for gin in the United States. And so one thing to really show is we got to do Milwaukee. We didn't know what to expect. We planned for about three months for this. We got to know some of the best bars and the best bartenders around that city in a range of different from dive bars to cocktail bars. We don't discriminate. We want the love of gin to hit everybody and create that excitement. But we were so deeply excited about the response of Milwaukee, for example. The engagement was quite large from both consumers and industry. We did a pop up at tiki bar. We did a pop up at a neighborhood dive bar. We did a pop up at a gin centric bar and really getting to see how they do things. And we brought all of the brand representatives with us. So we had eight brands with us and they got to directly engage with the consumer as the brands. We had a big event at the Milwaukee Public Market, which is one of the highest regarded markets in the United States and really penetrating through a city with the joyful nature of the category of gin. And that's exactly what we want to teach. We usually start with a massive blind tasting seminar where we take out the stigmas of gin, right? Oh, you think you know this bottle because you've seen it on the shelf for decades, right? But do you really know it? Do you understand those flavor profiles in it when you're not looking at the bottle? And so what we've watched is like industry. We taste through a throw gin blind tasting and be like, Oh my gosh, I didn't realize how much I loved this brand, right? But I sit there and look at it as a brand that you've known forever, right? But kind of allowing people to revisit things by taking out that judging a book by its cover type of thing. And so we try to, in a top down and grassroots up way, engage with these smaller cities around the United States.
Paul Clarke
When we're looking at 2025 for the months ahead. Where do you plan to take this concept? How do you plan to kind of continue this momentum?
Natasha Bahrami
Well, we have about 12 markets that are lined up. For example, we will be visiting Minneapolis, will be visiting Milwaukee, will be visiting Indianapolis. Pittsburgh is something that we're looking at and we're really trying to learn about these markets before we go into them. Connecting with bar teams, people we might already know. And then we talk to them about people we should know, right? People who are doing exciting things or people who are deeply connected with the community. It's like when you go to a bar at a new city that you go into and you loved it, right? And you ask that bartender or bar team, Where do I go next, right? Who do I engage with that wants to have a good time with our brands, wants to be able to meet brands and might be willing to host because we are coming in with a strong, powerful team of not only some of the best bartenders, but brands that are dedicating what they're doing to education. We've convinced them to work together. We've convinced them that there is a higher goal than just focusing on their one brand individually, that they're coming together to educate on the category of gin instead of only explicitly theirs. So you'll be able to find us on GinWorld.Com with a list of cities that we're intending on hitting this year. And we work on having timelines and events that are going on in every city that are built one hour daytime, right, for industry. Some of them are nighttime so that we can engage consumers when they get off work. Some of them are completely industry focused and some of them will be very consumer focused because we talk to each other a little bit differently in on different levels.
Paul Clarke
And it sounds like by doing this, you're focusing on a very kind of organic approach of finding where those true pockets of enthusiasm and curiosity are and really kind of bring a message that they're looking for.
Natasha Bahrami
We're here to build.
Paul Clarke
Now we're moving toward the exit here. Are there any final thoughts on gin, gin World, gin events or your favorite martini specs that you want to share?
Natasha Bahrami
We're going to be traveling the United States. High brow, low brow, you know, like a martini could be seen as high brow. Right. But it doesn't have to be right. Negronis are seen as an industry standard. Right. But we're trying to move guests, consumers into falling in love with these things as well. So what you really hit on is we're taking a grassroots movement, but taking it extremely powerfully and doing more because we're coming in almost like a of brands that are coming with us to kind of paint the rainbow of the category of gin in a way that How do you not love that? Right. There's something in there that you're going to fall in love with. And we're hoping that coming at it as a team the same way Whiskey was able to do many, many years ago, they worked together to build Kentucky bourbon upright. People don't see that anymore, but we're really trying to build gin as a community and so very excited to see where this can go.
Paul Clarke
Fantastic. Well, Natasha, thanks so much for sharing all of your gin insight and gin enthusiasm and your plans for gin in the year ahead.
Natasha Bahrami
Thank you so much, Paul. It is always a pleasure to talk to you.
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Paul Clarke
You can find the full lineup of upcoming events online at Ginworld.Com, and you can find Natasha Bahrami on Instagram @TheGinGirl. We've got those links for you in this episode’s notes.
And thanks again to this episode sponsor, Charleston Wine and Food.
And that's it for this episode. Be sure to subscribe to Radio Imbibe on your favorite podcast app to keep up with all our future episodes. We've got plenty of articles and recipes for you online at our website imbibemagazine.com. Keep up with us day to day on Instagram, Pinterest, threads, and Facebook. And if you're not already a subscriber to the print and or digital issues of imbibe, then here's your opportunity to come on board. Just follow the link to the episodes notes and we'll be happy to help you out. I'm Paul Clarke. This is Radio Imbibe. Catch you next time.