In a Berlin beer hall, before they pour your Berliner Weisse, they ask you one question: red or green? This week’s folktail is a sour wheat beer with a shot of syrup that survived by getting smaller. Bar Convent Berlin, the most important bar show of the year, is about to try the same.

A folktail is what I call a street drink: popular, cheap and rooted in a place. Every week I follow one and, through it, tell you the bar and hospitality industry news, in about fifteen minutes.

In this episode:

• The Berliner Weisse mit Schuss: the “Champagne of the North” (legend or not), old bottles aged like wine, and why Berliners started adding raspberry and woodruff syrup around 1900
• Bar Convent Berlin (BCB) drops from three days to two in 2027, after around 11,000 visitors in its 20th edition
• Zana Möhlmann (Manhattan Bar, Singapore) wins Diageo World Class 2026 with a barrel-aged Rob Roy. I met her in Amsterdam, when she was at Flying Dutchmen Cocktails and Super Lyan, and she was the one who recommended my barber
• Ana Roš (Hiša Franko, Slovenia) won’t travel to Lima for The 50 Best Restaurants gala, even though she’s number 60 on the list
• Max Shapiro vs Massimo Bottura: “the worst meal of my life” at Osteria Francescana, and the answer in the Instagram comments
• What one extra star on Yelp or Google Maps means for an independent restaurant, according to a Harvard Business School study by Michael Luca
• Why every new café and wine bar looks the same, from Bilbao to Lisbon to Mexico City
• Think Drinks’ UK trends report: are we drinking less, or just lighter? Plus the rise of the Hugo Spritz and low-ABV drinks
• Absolut x Charli XCX, “I love Dirty Martini” T-shirts and a song called “Card Declined”

Coming up: Lucerne Cocktail Week, Athens Bar Show (3–4 November), The 50 Best Restaurants in Lima (4 November), Puerto Rico Cocktail Week (8–14 November), the first Manchester Cocktail Festival (from 9 November) and Bar Convent Berlin 2027 (4–5 October).

And to finish, two one-star Google reviews for two of the best cocktail bars in the world. One says skip the cocktails and order a beer. Which bars? Listen and find out.

Folktails is a weekly podcast about cocktails, bartending and the bar and hospitality industry, made from behind the bar by Alf del Portillo, bartender and co-owner of Quattro Teste in Lisbon.

Follow me:
Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/alfdelportillo⁠
Linktree: ⁠https://linktr.ee/folktailsbyalf⁠
YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@folk_tails⁠
Substack: https://folktails.substack.com

TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@alf.del.portillo⁠

A mother in a Spanish village with no bus needed a bar that would feed her daughter once a week. That bar will never be on a list, and this was the week the bar industry sat down to grade itself.

In this episode:

• Bar Convent Berlin turns twenty, drops to two days, and why the third day matters
• The 50 Best Bars list: Bar Leone, London down to three, Hamish Smith (CLASS Magazine) and Tyler Zielinski
• Kings Heath, Birmingham: Matt Wilden (Perro) and Katie Rouse (Couch) open a bar. Chelsie Bailey (Happiness Forgets) on moving to London. Abraham Rivera
• Tom Kerridge's VAT petition, the British Beer and Pub Association on pub closures, and why I think rent is the bigger squeeze

• Rules and the National Trust
• The KAM report on alcohol-free drinks, and what it means behind the bar

• Noah Galuten in Punch on the beach dive bars of southern California, and
• Plus two reviews of reviews of cocktail bars.

Follow me:
Instagram: https://instagram.com/alfdelportillo
TikTok and everything else: https://linktr.ee/folktailsbyalf
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@folk_tails
Substack: https://folktails.substack.com