It’s Negroni Week! For this episode we’re joined by Francisco Terrazas, executive director of the Tequila Interchange Project (TIP), to share how TIP has used a grant from the Slow Food Negroni Week Fund to help fulfill their mission; and Renato Giovannoni, a founder and partner in Floreria Atlantico in Buenos Aires, Bahrain, and Washington D.C., who tells of his enduring love for the Negroni and how his D.C. bar will be celebrating Negroni Week.
It’s Negroni Week! For this episode we’re joined by Francisco Terrazas, executive director of the Tequila Interchange Project (TIP), to share how TIP has used a grant from the Slow Food Negroni Week Fund to help fulfill their mission; and Renato Giovannoni, a founder and partner in Floreria Atlantico in Buenos Aires, Bahrain, and Washington D.C., who tells of his enduring love for the Negroni and how his D.C. bar will be celebrating Negroni Week.
Radio Imbibe is the audio home of Imbibe magazine. In each episode, we dive into liquid culture, exploring the people, places, and flavors of the drinkscape through conversations about cocktails, coffee, beer, spirits, and wine. Keep up with us at imbibemagazine.com, and on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook, and if you're not already a subscriber, we'd love to have you join us—click here to subscribe.
Paul Clarke
Hey everybody, welcome back to Radio Imbibe from Imbibe Magazine. I'm Paul Clarke, Imbibe's Editor-in-Chief.
And right now, at the time this episode is going live, we're right in the middle of Negroni Week. For 14 years now, we've been proud to coordinate this global cocktail party in celebration of the Negroni and all of its related cocktails. And while Negroni Week has grown in scale over the years, from around 120 participating venues in the first year, to thousands of places regularly participating every year now, it's also grown in impact, raising more than $5 million to date for charitable organizations. This year's Negroni Week runs through September 27th, so you've got plenty of time still to join in. Just head to negroniweek.com to learn more about the event and to find a participating venue near you.
For the past few years, Negroni Week has multiplied its impact by focusing on a single giving partner, Slow Food. This is perfect for Negroni Week because Slow Food is a global movement of local communities and activists across 160 countries, seeking to change the world through food and beverage. Slow Food envisions a world where everyone can enjoy food and beverage that is good for them, good for the people who produce it, and good for the planet. This partnership between Slow Food and Imbibe helps support people and programs worldwide working for sustainability, education, equity, and diversity in food, drink, and hospitality.
And while it's one thing for us to talk about Slow Food and Negroni Week and how the two go together, it's another to hear the perspective straight from some of the people who participate in Negroni Week and some of the people who are taking that support and are putting it to good use in their communities. So for this episode of Radio Imbibe, for Negroni Week 2026, we're chatting with a couple of individuals who both participate in their own way. First off, we're going to talk to Francisco Terrazas, the Executive Director of the Tequila Interchange Project. Readers of Imbibe may remember Francisco from a profile we ran of him this past March, covering the different things that the Tequila Interchange Project does. As a recipient of a grant from the Slow Food Negroni Week Fund, Francisco and the project are working on a number of efforts and initiatives. And stick around after that conversation, because we've got a Negroni Week twofer for you. We're chatting with Renato Giovannoni, founder and partner in Floreria Atlantico, a magnificent bar with locations in Buenos Aires, Bahrain, and its newest venue, a spot in Washington, D. C.'s Georgetown neighborhood, which we highlighted this past January as part of our annual Imbibe 75. To get things started, here's our conversation with Francisco Terrazas from Tequila Interchange Project.
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Paul Clarke
Francisco, welcome to Radio Imbibe.
Francisco Terrazas
Hey, Paul, thank you so much for having me. It's connect with you, as always, and excited to talk TIP and what we did with Slow Food.
Paul Clarke
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we had you in Imbibe recently in our March-April issue in a conversation with Tess Lampert about you and your work with Tequila Interchange Project and what brought you to this position in your life right now. And I want to talk a little bit about some of the work that you're doing, but before we get into that, for folks who may not have picked up that issue or caught that story or have not yet come across tip, let's bring them up to speed. What is the Tequila Interchange Project and what is it that you do?
Francisco Terrazas
Yeah, so the Tequila Interchange Project was an organization that was founded in 2010 by David Suro, who owns a restaurant called Tequilas in Philadelphia. He's from Guadalajara. That was his first kind of foray into hospitality in the U. S. He also owns a few Mexican spirits brands and is also an importer. But he started this nonprofit in the early 20-teens and really got it off the ground in 2011, 2012. That's when I first connected with him was when I was living in Austin at the time and was invited to a seminar he was giving, kind of introducing his portfolio. And he then touched into the work that they were doing with Tequila Interchange Project, the foundation that he started. And at that time, the two main focuses for the organization was labor rights and kind of focusing on giving visibility to people in the supply chain, particularly the jimadores in the agave spirits industry. And also just sustainability and the effects that the denomination of origin, monoculture, things like that can have on the industry. So that's where I first got to meet David and know about the Tequila Interchange Project.
Fast forward several years, David and I kind of intersected in our career paths in several different ways. You know, I own part of a rum company that he's now connected with and things like that. And just working in agave spirits, David's presence was kind of always there in the background because he's been such a mentor and inspiration to so many people. So that's how I kind of kept contact with him. And around 2022, I kind figuring out what I was going to do. I was working for Mezcal Vago and Tequila Ocho at the time under Sampson Surrey Heaven Hill. And I was just kind of seeing what else was out there and because I'd been with Vago for about eight years, almost 10 years at that point. And David connected with me and mentioned that he was looking for somebody to kind of restart the organization because they had gone dormant during the pandemic. So we talked for a while and it took about a year or so to kind of get all of our ducks in a row. So I came on board as the executive director for Tequila Interchange Project, charged with kind of relaunching the organization, basically starting it from scratch. I mean, we had the registered 501c3 and a small balance in the bank and that was about it. And we went from there, recruiting board members, planning out some programming, looking for some initial funds and things like that. So that's how I got started. And I started with the organization in late 2023, early 2024. So I really started doing some work and kind of getting the board together.
Paul Clarke
And, you know, we love highlighting the Tequila Interchange project and the work that you do. But one of the reasons I want to have you on the podcast now is because when this episode goes live in late September, we'll be right in the middle of Negroni week. And for folks who might be wondering Negroni week, tequila, what's, what's the link here. Here's the deal: Negroni Week's official global giving partner for the past few years has been Slow Food and donations that come in for participating bars during Negroni week, go into what's called the Slow Food Negroni Week Fund. And those funds are distributed to a range of organizations and projects and efforts who are all working in one way or another to create a better, fairer, more sustainable food system. And for last year's Negroni week, the 2025 cycle, one of the recipients of a Slow Food Negroni Week innovation award was Tequila Interchange Project. And you at TIP, you took that funding and put it into a professional development program. Is that correct?
Francisco Terrazas
Yeah, that's right. So the mission of Tequila Interchange project is kind of rooted in three main sections, promoting traditional practices, responsible production management, and human health in the agave spirits industry. A large part of that when we first started the organization was bringing people down to Mexico to see traditional production firsthand. You know, those trips kind of evolved. And as the categories evolved, a lot of people have been to Mexico, whether it be with a brand or through their bar or on their own, what have you. So the industry is a lot more familiar with seeing that. So we've been looking for ways to facilitate professional development in the hospitality and beverage industry beyond just bringing people down for a trip. And I connected or found out about the Negroni week fund through Danny Child of slow drinks. And he really strongly suggested that we apply.
So I put together a proposal for a professional development program that focused on kind of three different tracks for people who were interested in the Agave spirits category, worked in hospitality, but weren't really sure how they wanted to engage with agave spirits. So the ways that I thought about that was, okay, there's some people who absolutely do love hospitality and are dedicated to that craft. So let's find a way to kind of develop that. And how can we connect them with more resources in Mexico and kind of see how people on the ground in Mexico, in hospitality, interact with agave spirits.
Another way was kind of through my own personal relationships with friends who have started in the hospitality industry and gone on to focus more on communication, particularly through writing. So that kind of gave me an idea for a track of how can we find somebody who's behind the bar, maybe wants to explore writing a little bit and have them focus on agave spirits.
And then there's some people who are focused more on kind of the hard sciences, the ecology of agave spirits. And how can we kind of help filter them through that? I have a good friend specifically in mind, Marcella Macias, who originally worked for on the distributor side of things, but is now in graduate school studying agave at University of New Mexico. And now it's kind of the inspiration for that. How can we get people to focus more on the academic side of things? So we took those three different tracks, hospitality, communications, writing, and kind of the hard sciences of agave spirits, created those three programs, packaged that up into one proposal and sent that off for Slow Food to hopefully get some funding for this program. And we were fortunate enough to be selected for one of the Innovation Awards, which we're really, really ecstatic about and really happy with the way that that program turned out.
Paul Clarke
And you know, we're about a year later, we're coming into the 2026 cycle. So you have some time now to implement these. And I want to talk about each of those channels a little bit individually, if we could. The last one that you mentioned, the hard science, that was the production and ecology residency that you set up. Tell us a little bit more about that and about the person who came in, the winning applicant for that role. What was their involvement in this?
Francisco Terrazas
So the one who was selected for that particular track and applied for that particular track, I should say, because everybody kind of highlighted in their application which one they were most interested in, was a woman named Marissa Mata, who is a friend of mine in Tucson, Arizona, who doesn't come from necessarily the hospitality side of things, which is also kind of one of the things that piqued my interest because it was one of the few applications that actually came from the retail site. She does a retail buying for a few shops in Tucson, Arizona, and is very connected with an event that I've been connected with in the past, the Agave Heritage Festival in Tucson, which kind of promotes traditional agave practices, brands that they think do a great job of showcasing that, and also how agave are connected to the Borderlands region. So that festival works with Marissa to kind of help place retail for brands that are participating in the festival. That's how I first got to know her. So she applied because there was a brand that we had connected with for the fund, and that was Sina Cantan, based in Puebla, and Sina Cantan was founded by Mezcalera and her business partner who's actually an ecologist originally from Colombia, but had been working in Mexico for several years, was a natural resource manager for a national park there, worked on Agave for a very long time. They started that brand. So it has been one of the brands that... That has been kinda more ecologically focused in the way that they're producing, putting a hard cap on their production volumes, et cetera. So we thought it would be really nice to showcase that program and have somebody travel down there and spend some time with them. And right around the same time, they actually started their own residency program where they were inviting people from the hospitality industry to go to Puebla and spend nine to 12 days on the ground with them, living at the Palenque, producing, seeing how they do their, their seed management, seed harvesting, their cultivation, their pest management controls and things of that nature, inspire them and, and look and understand what they were doing to focus on things like regenerative agriculture and things like that to produce Mezcal and not a sustainable manner, but a more sustainable manner than what people might typically be used to when they see production on at that level. So Marissa traveled down there. She got to spend nine days straight at the Palenque with a Fabiola, the Mezcaleta. And a few other folks, there were some folks from, I think we were just talking about St. Louis before we started on the recording. There was a couple of folks from St. Louis who were there on the trip. for a couple from Mexico as well. think there was one person from Europe, if I'm not mistaken. So it was a really great kind of international group of people that were there to all kind of see how this particular project focused on producing Mezcal in the most, sustainable manner that they possibly could.
And with the time that we pitched this program, we didn't even realize that they were starting their own residency. It was just kind of a happy accident. And the international focus of it, I thought was also very serendipitous because in writing our application for the Negroni Week fund, they were looking for, okay, how can this foster further collaboration down into the future beyond just the timeframe of this particular program? And I really feel like making those connections with people, both from different states in the US, but also people in Mexico and other countries, I really, my hope is that those relationships will continue to inspire these folks and kind of think of other ways to connect around agave Spirits, maybe around more sustainable practices, whether that be inside or outside of the agave Spirits category. So that kind of just culmination of all those different factors was for me, at least when I was writing the proposal was really just kind of beyond what I could have possibly hoped for the outcome to be because we weren't even planning on those different people being there from those different places. So I think it kind of really fit the spirit of what the application was looking for. So that was, was really fantastic to see.
Paul Clarke
And now, of course, you mentioned early on the hospitality industry has been big supporters of tip over the years and you yourself came out of the hospitality industry. So another channel for the professional development network was this hospitality residency. So how did that one unfold and who was the winning candidate for that program?
Francisco Terrazas
So that was a really great person that I have connected with a few different times through my own brand work. I really love the mid-Atlantic. I was born in D. C. I always loved my time going back and traveling there. And that was actually where the selected applicant is based. And his name is Clinton Lopez. He's worked at several different hospitality programs in the D. C. area. Right now, he's at the Silver Lyan, I believe, when he was submitting his application. And he's just a really wonderful guy. Right now, he's more focused in cocktails, but does a lot of Agave Spirits-focused education for himself? He's traveling to Mexico a lot, interacting with brands, and that just really seems to be where his heart is out of all the different categories. And in his application, you know, his long-term vision, which I thought was really, really cool, was that he doesn't necessarily want to open an Agave Spirits bar or work for a brand, but he does want to do a lot of community-focused, and when I say community, I mean hospitality, beverage community. In the D. C., Baltimore area, he wants to do a lot of education and really just in his own words, has really just kind of funded himself. Maybe find a couple of brand partnerships if he needs some samples or something like that, but do like a truly brand-independent education program around Agave Spirits for the beverage community around him, which I thought was really, really great.
He's very dedicated to the craft of hospitality, really professional, does really great drinks, and kind of approaches service from a very serious and dedicated frame of mind. And we were able to connect him with one of my favorite programs and somebody who has been connected to Tequila Interchange Project in a variety of ways, and that is Pedro Jiménez of Mezonte is the brand that he owns and also the name of his tasting room that he owns in Guadalajara. He owns a few other bars. Barra de Sufrid is one of them, which is a really well-known bar in Guadalajara, kind of a cumbia, agave spirits, and beer bar, which is just one of my favorite places in the world. But he actually got to go down there and spend a week with that group. During the day, he would go through what they would do for, if they were training a new hire at the tasting room at Mezonte. So during the day, he would do agave spirits training with them. And then in the evenings, he would go to their sister bar, De La O, which is right down the street. And that's more of a kind of like a cantina-style cocktails, beer, food menu. Yeah. And do evening service with them. So, he stage with them for a few nights during the week. And then a couple of times they actually went, because they're in Guadalajara, they're in a great place. That's where the reason I wanted the program to be based there, was because Jalisco, Guadalajara, is one of the more dynamic regions, I think, in agave spirits. Because you have, obviously, the tequila industry, which is absolutely enormous. But then, you drive two hours out of Guadalajara and you're visiting campesinos in the West. Or, other agave spirits producers down in the South, like Aranza Potitlan and things like that. So, it's a really great way to see so many different types of spirits being produced in different ways, in different profiles. got different scales, different methods, etc. So, you get so many different perspectives on agave spirits production.
What they did is that, during the day, him and a few members of the staff would actually go out and visit producers. So, he got to connect with kind of the more cocktail side of things through his time at De La O. He got to get agave spirits training with Zule and Pedro at Mezonte, which is one of the best agave spirits bar, if not the best agave spirits bar, I think, in the world. And, spend time on the ground with producers on both the tequila side of things and on the smaller, kind of more campesino, traditional agave spirits side of things as well. Our vision was to make this really well rounded kind of agave experience in Jalisco. And then, that all culminated with him doing kind of his own little three cocktail pop-up menu at De La O to kind of talk about his experience, meet some of the clientele. And the idea behind that was really so that he could see how people in a place like Guadalajara that are so physically connected in physical proximity to agave spirits of so many different scales and methods, how they incorporate those spirits into their bar program, how they put them into cocktails, how they talk about them with their guests, etc. And then, hopefully, go back and do that and kind of share that experience with his team in D. C., with the bartending community in D. C., and with his guests in D. C. also. The long-term vision for that would ideally be to kind of a two-way exchange where eventually we have some folks from Guadalajara travel up to D. C. or other places in the U. S. in the U. S. and actually do kind of like three, four-night residencies at bars in those areas and kind of talk about what it's like to be from a place like Guadalajara or maybe Oaxaca or something like that. And kind of how agave spirits are perceived in their own kind of home territories.
Paul Clarke
And then, you mentioned you also set up a writer-in-residence program. What was the rationale behind creating this? You talked about this a little bit earlier, but what was the rationale behind leaning into this side of the program? And what kind of opportunities and interests did you see and who's doing that program?
Francisco Terrazas
Yeah, so I was inspired to do that by a variety of people, connecting with my good friend, Emma Janzen, who her and I were in Austin, Texas at the same time. She was just starting out at the local newspaper, so she's always been a close connection of mine who's in the writing world. My own wife started in the hospitality side of things and then transitioned more into wine writing, connecting with Susan Costs from Mezcalistas, who I know are always trying to find new writers to to the website and things like that. I just saw this this opportunity for somebody who maybe came from not even necessarily the hospitality side of things, but was really interested in becoming a dedicated Agave Spirits writer and just didn't quite know the path that they need to take to get there. And we were fortunate enough to get us an application from a woman named Carmen Lopez, who is a Mexico City based writer and came from the hospitality side of things, but kind of more from like a consultant side is not necessarily what you would think of as like a day to day behind the stick spirits focus bartender. But has consulted on a lot of programs in both Mexico and has spent some time in New York City as well consulting with bar programs there, curating menus, things like that, but is very, very well versed in the Agave Spirits from the north to the south of Mexico. And her application really, really struck me because she just seemed to have a really wonderful lens for the cultural side of things and what Agave Spirits meant to her personally and how she wanted to share that with readers, with people, at least from my experience. I've done a little bit of editing here and there for in a variety of ways. And I was just really captivated by the voice that you could of see coming through what she was writing, and because, you know, there is a few things that were lost in translation here and there, or, just from experience, you know, you just kind of have to hone things down a little bit, clean them up here and there. But you can see like the kind of diamond that just needs to be polished a little bit, right?
And I could see that in her voice and I was just, it made me, reading her application, the way she talked about what spirits meant to her, it reinvigorated me to a certain extent about what Agave Spirits can be, how people can talk about them. That was why I was really just ecstatic that she applied because I had not, I had heard her name mentioned a couple of times because she's written a couple of pieces here and there. I think she wrote a piece about Israeli Agave Spirits, like right after she submitted her application that was published on LA Taco, if I'm not mistaken. She has just been really wonderful to work with. Again, a little bit of serendipity through this program is that we funded a trip for her to Jalisco for the same reasons that I mentioned previously is because there's so much going on in the agave spirits category we didn't even get into the things like how avocado cultivation, berry cultivation is affecting the category, etc. So, that was another reason I wanted her to go down there and just see what's happening. And she was there at the same time as Clint, who she happened to know through just her time in New York City, I believe. And she knew a lot of the people that were in town. So, she was able to connect very much in the same way Marissa was able to connect with various people through her experience and just kind of share agave spirits and talk about them and kind of get different points of view, which I thought was really, really valuable. Well, and we are just putting actually just yesterday, I got the revised version of her second piece, which is going to be coming out here in the next week or so. And that's kind of focused on the structure of the denomination of origin, the NORMA that's in the process of being revised. So, that's one of the reasons we thought it was a very timely topic because that's something that's going on right now. And we're kind of approaching the end of the comment window. So, we really want to get that in front of people and get them talking about it to see how the Mezcal NORMA is being rewritten and revised and what little changes there are here and there. Because a lot of people don't realize when that's going on. And she's done a great job of talking about what the NORMA is and why the good and the bad of it and kind of the complications behind it. So, that will be her second piece, which I'm really, really excited to see come out. And that's just been a really wonderful experience of working with her and kind of seeing her, even in the couple pieces that she's written, is seeing her voice come through. It's been really, really wonderful. And then working with our volunteer editors, Ferrin Salnaker, for example, is one of them, who used to write with Mezcalistas. It has been really great to kind of see them edit and help her kind of hone her craft and things like that. So, it's been a really cool experience.
Paul Clarke
Looking ahead, we've gone over all of these experiences from the past year. Looking ahead from these experiences, what you've learned from going through these programs, what can we expect to see Tequila Interchange Project doing in the months and years ahead? And how have you internalized some of the experiences from working with this project?
Francisco Terrazas
That's a great question. And I was kind of touching on this topic with a friend of mine yesterday on the phone is that working in agave spirits, there's no real way around it. It's a very extractive enterprise just by nature, right? We're taking plants out of the ground that take sometimes decades to mature, and not always being the most responsible about replenishing those natural stocks. Tequila Interchange Project has been a really wonderful way for me to kind of evaluate my own role in the category, not that I'm like by any means influential or anything like that, but just intrinsically, what do I want this career to be? Which direction do I want to see agave spirits go? Tequila Interchange Project has given me, I think, a really cool or really wonderful opportunity to through this specific program, obviously hospitality, right?
But we've also done things like for the first time we did research grants. We did conservation grant. Those were $5, 000 each. The research grant went to a woman named Maria Magdalena who was based in Guadalajara. I think she's in Jalisco or in Oaxaca now. She was working with raicilla producers in Cabo Corrientes, which is in western Jalisco, to see kind of what agroecological techniques they use to grow their agave. What techniques can be scaled and then applied to the tequila industry to kind of help mitigate some of the environmental impacts of that category. The conservation grant went to a really, really wonderful group named Tierra del Jaguar, which operates in Sonora, just south of the U. S.-Mexico border. And they actually do watershed restoration of the Sahuaripa River watershed in northern Sonora. And they do that through planting agave agustafolia. They grow seeds. They pay people in these rural communities to then go out and plant those. And that helps establish the soil, reduces the erosion, and then helps restore that watershed, which is the natural habitat for the jaguar, which are endangered in the northern borderlands. You know, they range from South America all the way up here into Arizona, but in Arizona they are very much endangered. So that's why that particular program is so vital to this particular network and this kind of natural corridor that we have on the border of Sonora and Chihuahua. that was, for me, I never really considered agave playing that role.
I would love to see those kinds of roles expand for TIP as well, facilitating more research, you know, in the early 2010s, when I first connected with TIP. We were funding some research through, I want to say, University of Pennsylvania. And that was focused on a research into pre-European distillation practices, whether or not those were going on, particularly in the border between Colima and Jalisco. Looking at some of the archaeological evidence, testing it, seeing if they were distilling agave or not. There's that type of research, there's the more ecologically focused research. I would love to see TIP expand more into that. I would love for us to fund more conservation projects. You know, I mentioned being such an extractive industry, I would love for the organization to be focused on putting things and preserving some of those natural resources even more than we already have.
You know, we, for a long time, we were really active, uh, with the bat-friendly agave certification through coordination with the Autonomous University of Mexico. That was put on hold when the agave prices were at all-time highs a few years ago. We recently re-registered or renewed, I should say, the trademark on bat-friendly. So, we own that particular brand. So, we're really trying to look at how we can get that program restarted.
And the one place that we haven't been as active as I would really love for us to be is in the healthcare space, particularly in rural Mexico. There is an extreme lack of resources for people for a lot of campesinos in Mexico, whether it be from physical proximity to a doctor, especially if they have a particularly specific ailment, right? It's very hard to get medical resources, to get treatment. Sometimes, they just have the money to afford a medication or things like that. I would really love for TIP and other organizations to look at something collaboratively and figure out how we can start a fund or start some kind of network to where we can get more services to some of these rural communities. That was something that I saw was kind of inspired through my work with Mezcal Vago, working with producers on the ground. And really just also, it's about changing mentalities because sometimes people just don't want to go see a doctor. I think that could be a really interesting opportunity for TIP to expand, and looking for more ways to expand our professional development program.
You know, the hospitality community has been so supportive of the organization over the years. It's getting harder and harder to operate bars and restaurants throughout the United States. And the people who have funded and helped support our organization, we cannot thank them enough. We really want to work on continuing to build those relationships and doing more consumer outreach. You know, I think the vast majority of our audience is at the hospitality level, the ones that are most connected to the brands that have supported the organization. That's usually how they hear about it. I would love for us to connect more with end consumers because I don't think they realize or understand the impacts that agave spirits can have and how much attention we need to focus on finding better ways to do things, preserving traditional methods like we've always advocated for taking care of the people along the supply chain. And I don't really think that they realize how much of an impact they can have, whether it be through purchasing decisions, financially supporting organizations like ours or some of the other nonprofits that are out there. would really like for us to just connect more with end consumers. I think that could be really valuable and could lead to some kind of sea change for the organization and for the category in general if we can close that connection a little bit and make a more direct connection for people to understand, oh, if I make these decisions, if I support these organizations, this will lead to better outcomes for me as a consumer through better spirits and for the people who are producing it through a better support structure.
Paul Clarke
Fantastic. This has been amazing. And Francisco, thanks so much for being on the podcast and sharing all of this with us. And good luck in the days ahead and happy Negroni week.
Francisco Terrazas
Thank you, Paul, very much to see you and connect as always. And thank you so much to Slow Food and Negroni week and to yourselves at Imbibe.
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Paul Clarke
You can find out more about the Tequila Interchange Project at tequilainterchangeproject. org. We've got that link for you in this episode's notes. Next up, the Washington, D. C. location of Floreria Atlantico opened in 2025, along with its companion restaurant, Brasero Atlantico. The bar and the restaurant embrace the spirit of Argentina and bring those to D. C. But in keeping with the foundational philosophy of Renato Giovannoni, they also reach deep into time and culture, exploring history, food ways, paths of human migration, and the natural world and biodiversity surrounding each of his places. Floreria Atlantico, Washington, D. C. is a returning participant this year as a premium donor. We're proud to have them back this year as part of Negroni Week, and we're delighted to welcome Renato Giovannoni to Radio Imbibe to talk about his bars, his enduring love for the Negroni, and his continued support of Negroni Week.
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Paul Clarke
Tato, welcome to Radio Imbibe.
Renato Giovannoni
Hey, Paul. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Always a pleasure to speak with Imbibe.
Paul Clarke
Absolutely. It's great to chat with you, and we've had the opportunity to do that a few times because over the years, you know, you were, of course, an owner of Floreria Atlantico. Your original location, your flagship location, is in Buenos Aires, and I had the pleasure of visiting there several years ago. More recently, you've opened a location in Washington, D. C., and we've talked about we've chatted about that one as well. For listeners who have not yet visited one of your bars, tell us a little bit about the original idea and kind of the core philosophy behind your locations.
Renato Giovannoni
Wow. Okay. I will try to do that. How to live! I'm, as an Argentinian, born human being. I was always trying to, to showcase my country, you know, through the things that I do, you know, life put me in this way, in this industry that I love. I spent like 10 years looking for a basement in Buenos Aires, and during that time that took me to find a proper place, my idea was to tell the story about Argentinity through a bar or a restaurant, no, but I didn't know how. I would say that Floreria Atlántico Buenos Aires was born with that goal and we achieved it. We ended up finding the name and the flower shop, it's, like, something that we added just before we opened, just to give something nice to the neighborhood. the main core and the, and the idea was to tell the story about the, about Argentina through the eyes of the immigrants that came through the Atlantic Ocean and to a new land, what they brought, the way they blend with the native towns and the local people and how they did like a, a very unique wreath that, if we want to put it like that.
This started 14 years ago, now that I am on this ship, of expanding the brands. We have two basic brands, which are both, both born in Buenos Aires, Floreria Atlántico as a cocktail bar and a tribute to the sea. And Brasero Atlántico, which is more the restaurant Argentinity represented by the countryside food that Argentine people used to cook and still do. And so, in the case of Floreria Atlántico, I believe that this part of me that love history and humankind and the way we all blend in some way. I see that Floreria Atlántico or Floreria Pacificos or Floreria Indios or whatever, see that it helps to join people, it will be represented.
So, even though we started it with a cocktail menu here in Washington DC last year, we just turned one year on September 13. And you know, just put it together, a venue is a lot here, we put together two venues plus a flower shop, the restaurant, the flower shop and the cocktail bar. So, I decided to do a tribute to the best sellers of the 14 years of Floreria Atlántico in Buenos Aires being open, with a little side of three drinks made inspired on this region. Now, I'm working on the new menu that is going to be launched hopefully in a month, and it's basically a tribute to the cosmic Vision, or the way they used to do to see the North Atlantic Sea, some of the colonies that came from mostly from Europe, through the Atlantic Ocean and some of the native towns of the East Coast. So, it's a tribute to the North Atlantic Sea. So, I believe that Floreria, the core of our, of what we try to do is to showcase how everything is blend, how everything is being shaped, but humanity and the way they move, you know, in this case, through the seas, you know, and how the, the oceans are connectors, instead of the barriers or frontiers or something that separate people, instead of that connecting people.
Paul Clarke
From my first visit to your Buenos Aires location, and from our conversations about Washington DC, something that really struck me, is, you're talking about a sense of place, but it's not just a static sense of place. There's a sense of history in place and the peoples who've come and gone and very much things about the local region and some of the food ways, and some of the biodiversity within these regions. And when you look at the things that you're serving, why are these concepts important to you? And why do they appeal to you to share in, in your restaurants and in your bars?
Renato Giovannoni
I think the most important thing is me, the way they make me feel, because I need to feel happy and, and excited about a project. And history always excites me. Producers always, always excites me. The way people produce the, it doesn't matter if they're small or big, how much love they put to what they do every day, the relationship that they have with the, with the land. And I feel moved about all those things. Um, I, I start dying inside when I don't, I don't feel that attraction or I don't feel like I'm being moved by anything or by something that I'm doing. And it's very appealing for me because it fills me up as a person, giving more knowledge and also introduced me to, to know where I'm, a lot of people live in places that they don't even know where, where they inhabited, where the base or I can understand. And I mean, you don't need to care, but it's more, much more interesting knowing and learning and you know, and what happened in, in this part of the world right now in Georgetown or in the East coast of the U S just to understand, you end up understanding many other things, you know, and I believe that the main thing is that willing inside of me of, of knowing, you know, And, and then I realized that from my background of advertising and trying to sell a product, if you have something true, interesting story to sell people absorb that. And, uh, you know, when you have your staff telling something that is real, that they embrace also they catch the attention of the people in a different way and people, and I got 14 years of, um, Showing me right that people come to Floreria Atlantica, Buenos Aires, willing for that experience, you know.
Paul Clarke
And at the time that people will be hearing this conversation, it will be Negroni Week taking place worldwide. We're delighted to have Floreria Atlantica returning as a Negroni Week participating bar this year in Washington, D. C. And talking first about Negroni Week as a concept, why is it important to you to participate in this global event and what brought you back this year?
Renato Giovannoni
I'm a big fan of the Negroni itself. You know, everybody, everybody is now, but growing up in Argentina with a lot of Italian roots and traditions and, and being both sides of my family with a lot of percentage of Italian blood. I love all the Amaro, bitters and vermouth, aperitif, and also I believe that the Negroni itself or of the, or these kinds of drinks, very classic and very well known, they tell a story of human movement. Because these drinks been moving from all over the place, you know, they travel the globe, you order a Negroni in any country of the world, and they will make you a Negroni. And those things we don't even pay attention.
So I'm a lover of the drink itself. I was in, there was a moment when it was a hundred years of a Negroni, they did a big party in Argentina. And ever since then, I like to do, play with the recipes. One of the recipes that is, it became like a trademark of Floreria Atlantico or a trademark of the Giovannoni Balestrini family. You know, they were one of the favorites that they were like, is the Negroni Balestrini, you know, is the Negroni Balestrini who was born on that day in Buenos Aires, and that day in Buenos Aires is a best seller in Floreria Buenos Aires. It's a best seller in Brasero Bahrain. It's a best seller in Brasero Atlantico DC. It's a best seller in Floreria Atlantico DC. I think it's, even though there's a pure knowledge of the recipe itself and the ingredients, it's a drink that also allows you to play around and bring some, some ideas for, like, for example, I don't know, for this Negroni week, I'm playing a tribute also to my grandfather Balestrini, which is the one who made me create. I mean, he didn't make me create, but the, the Balestrini became very popular when, when I did a tribute to him through that drink and he also was, as I mentioned for you in the past, he was for me, like an Indiana Jones and 007. Uh, he loved to travel the world. Uh, he was the first one to, to introduce me to the national geographics, the history of the world, humankind and everything. So I decided to pay a little bit of a tribute in this case to Latin America through the, um, our venue in Washington, DC. So we're going to have a few Negroni Balestrinis with a Latin American influence. So it's going to be a Balestrini on tour, if you want, around Latin America. So some, I have a spirit in case, or instead of the Argentinian gin that I use as a base or a, or a pisco or a singani. So you can basically order your Balestrini from which region of South America or Latin America you want to make it. The base spirit is going to be a Apostoles Gin or a singani or a pisco or a cachaça or a agave spirit.
Paul Clarke
That sounds fantastic. Now, Negroni Week's returning giving partner is Slow Food, and the money raised through Negroni Week goes to a range of projects funded by Slow Food, including support for organizations in the hospitality sector, educational scholarships for people worldwide, all in keeping with Slow Food's goal for a food and drink system that is sustainable, equitable, and that promotes community. How does Floreria Atlantico's core philosophy and your approach and values kind of fit in or overlap with any of these goals? Where do you see things that may sound familiar to you?
Renato Giovannoni
In many, in many ways, I will say also many, that's for many bars and restaurants all over the world. And this may be a new way of seeing the bar industry in the last probably eight to 10 years, the locations for the local producers and how close you can get to a seasonal menu, or to be connected with people that they believe in what they do and, you know, not only buying from the bigger ones, but doing some research. I am a little bit behind on what my goal is for the venue in Georgetown, in Washington, D. C., but I am very happy that in this new menu, even though without going out like I did in Argentina for 13 years, which is, you know, that time give you a lot of access to knowing producers and shake their hands and establishing a better relationship here in the U. S., one thing that I'm happy about is the resources through the net and how easy you can get information, which in Argentina probably you don't even find any producer. But in the new menu... There's a lot of local things, local suppliers, small ones, you know, uh, understanding. And my goal is slowly, slowly start traveling around this area, which is so rich also because this is one of the richest areas in the U. S. for everything, for dairy, for honey, for seafood. And you know me for quite a long now and you know how obsessed I get into, into finding like little things or things that people say you're not going to find that. And then you end up finding it, you know? So I'm happy. I even found a, a muscato wine for one of the drinks.
Paul Clarke
That's beautiful. Now, as I noted, know, this episode will coming out during Negroni Week. You mentioned some of the approaches you're taking to the Negroni. For folks in the Washington, D. C. area or who will be in Washington, D. C. this week, anything else they should know?
Renato Giovannoni
First of all, they should come in if they haven't been yet to, to know us. You know, uh, we're a fresh new bar with some ideas brought from many years of working in South America, traveling the world and still fighting and understanding if I can apply some of those ideas here to the U.S. and, and also understanding how different and how similar we are also in many things. So come and see something new and fresh in the D. C. area. Hopefully understand our, our tribute to the Atlantic and the way, very respectful way of how we treat everything that we study and we learn regarding to humankind. You know, it's always an approach with a lot of respect and hopefully people understand that also.
Paul Clarke
Tato, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me for, for all of this and for sharing this insight and happy Negroni week.
Renato Giovannoni
Happy Negroni week. Paul, it's always a pleasure, you know, I'm waiting for you to come and see you and give you a hug. Thank you for all, every time that you give us the space to, to tell the audience what we do. And it's a pleasure to be here on Imbibe radio.
[music]
Paul Clarke
You can find Floreria Atlantico DC online at FloreriaAtlanticoDC.com. We've got that link for you in this episode's notes. And once again, this year's Negroni week runs through September 27th. That's this coming Sunday. Be sure to get out there and visit one of the supporting venues and thank them for their support of Negroni week and slow food. You can find that full list of participating venues at Negroniweek.com.
And that's it for this episode. Subscribe to Radio Imbibe on your favorite podcast app to keep up with all our future episodes. We've got tons of recipes and articles for you online at our website, imbibemagazine.com. Follow us on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and threads for all our day-to-day coverage. And if you're not already a subscriber to the print and/or digital issues of Imbibe, then here's your opportunity to get on board. Just follow the link in this episode's notes and we'll be happy to help you out. I'm Paul Clarke. This is Radio Imbibe. Catch you next time.