Data and Drams

Sarah Kenyon

Both the tech industry and the world of whisky can feel like gated communities, intimidating and complex. Data & Drams is here to open the door. Join Sarah as she distills the technical truth behind your favourite spirits and the career journeys of the world’s top tech executives. From on-site distillery tours exploring the "data behind the dram" to informal, speakeasy-style interviews with CTOs and Founders, we bridge the gap between craftsmanship and code. Savour the Data. Stay for the Drams.

  1. 10 Sept

    Pioneering Innovation with Carlie Dyer, Head Distiller & Blender at Starward Whisky

    Welcome back to Data & Drams, I’m joined By Carlie Dyer, originally from New Zealand, Carlie has called Melbourne home for the past 11 years.  Beginning her career in wine at the age of 19, Carlie quickly developed a passion for the science and art of fermentation during her time as a winery technician.  After seven years in the wine industry, her love of creativity and experimentation inspired her to transition to the spirits industry. As Head Distiller and Head Blender at Starward, Carlie oversees all aspects of liquid production, from distillation to bottling. She works closely with a team of distillers who bring expertise from the beer, wine, and engineering industries to craft a distinctive Australian whisky, fully matured in red wine casks.  I was lucky enough to taste the latest Starward Shiraz co-ferment release while Carlie took me through its flavour and her process. We discussed Carlie’s incredible journey from wine labs and vintage work into her role leading Starward's production. We dove deep into the science behind their co-fermented spirits, from pairing grape juice with single malt wort to how sensory checks, congener tracking, and Melbourne’s unique climate shape what ends up in the bottle. Plus, Carlie opened up about the art of team sensory calibration, navigating industry challenges like excise taxes, and what it takes to build a new signature category for Australian whisky. It was so cool to look at where wine chemistry meets modern whisky making, and I know you’re going to love it. So pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and join Carlie and I for Data and Drams. Check out the dram of the episode, Co-Ferment Shiraz .

    Pioneering Innovation with Carlie Dyer, Head Distiller & Blender at Starward Whisky
  2. 22 Aug

    Palate Intelligence with Dramfly

    Welcome back to Data and Drams. Today, I’m joined by Senior Product Designer Stergios and Enterprise Architect Kostas, the duo behind Caskbase; the indie studio creating digital tools born out of genuine passion, and the creators of the mobile tasting app, Dramfly. With over two decades of combined experience across enterprise tech, fintech, healthcare, and luxury automotive, the two met more than a decade ago bonding over a shared love of drams and regular trips to whisky festivals. Stergios, brings over twelve years of research-led product design leadership, shaping human-centered experiences for millions of users at places like Barclays and Standard Life, as well as crafting luxury digital journeys for high-end automotive brands. Kostas, brings over 20 years of commercial software experience. Having led technical strategy for complex systems, ETL pipelines, and high-performance applications, he specialises in building robust, domain-driven architectures. We spoke about their whisky origins and how swapping big enterprise environments for startup agility forced them to prioritise rapid experimentation, including how discovering dead zones in underground Scottish pubs led them to iterate the app and create an offline mode. We also walked through Dramfly’s core user journey, from logging dram profiles to mapping flavour radars and dove deep into Kostas’s technical choices, from immutable snapshots to their .NET and Azure stack and (as Kostas puts it “an army of little AI agents). Plus, we covered MVP scope, GDPR compliance, and their future ambitions for community recommendations. So pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and join Stergios, Kostas, and me for Data and Drams. Check out Dramfly here - https://www.dramfly.com/ Follow along on Instagram or see what drams I'm recommending here.

    Palate Intelligence with Dramfly
  3. 30 July

    Tech Meets Tradition with Angela D'Orazio, Creative Director of Whiskymaking at Compass Box

    Welcome back to Data and Drams, I’m joined by Angela D’Orazio the Creative Director of Whiskymaking at Compass Box. With a career spanning more than two decades at the cutting edge of whisky innovation, Angela has a global reputation for fearless creativity and flavour experimentation.  Angela spent over 20 years at Mackmyra, where she served as Master Blender and Chief Nose Officer, and was responsible for some of the industry’s most unconventional releases - from award winning green tea finish to Swedish oak on cloudberry wine and Calvados finishes to Sweden’s first smoky whisky. She also helped develop the world’s first whisky designed using AI. She’s a World Whiskies Awards ‘Whisky Legend’, an inductee into the Swedish Whisky Hall of Fame, and a globally respected judge at major competitions including IWSC, ISC, and the World Whiskies Awards. She broke boundaries when she ran the world’s largest whisky tasting and has spent her career mentoring and inspiring the next generation of whiskymakers. As Creative Director of Whiskymaking at Compass box, Angela brings her passion for boundary-pushing flavour and storytelling to a whisky brand equally committed to questioning conventions.  Now when I first got my hands on the AI Intelligence whisky, I thought wouldn’t it be amazing to interview the mind behind this. Fast forward to now, I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to do just that.  We spoke about Angela’s journey into whisky, navigating male dominated spaces and her advice on how to lead within them; we also talked about how the industry is balancing tradition with technology, industry cost cycles and digitisation.  Plus we dove into her experience on the AI Whisky Project and what those inputs, interactions and constraints were and how she sees whisky and their recipes evolving over the next decade.  Angela’s immersive storytelling was amazing, not to mention a special appearance from her poodle Doris and hearing from other farmyard friends. This is an interview I won’t forget for a long time.   So pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink and join Angela and I for Data and Drams.

    Tech Meets Tradition with Angela D'Orazio, Creative Director of Whiskymaking at Compass Box
  4. 15 July

    The Science of Spirits with Jan Hodel-Keane, Founder of ResearchScan

    Welcome back to today’s episode of Data & Drams. I’m joined by Jan Hodel-Keane, a Senior Technical Account Manager at Kerry Group, who brings a strong blend of technical, managerial, and scientific expertise to the distilling industry. In his current role he partners with distilleries and leading brands across the UK & Ireland alcohol beverage sector, working at the intersection of technical insight and commercial delivery. Previously, as Principal Consultant at JR Unity Ltd. and R&D Manager at West Cork Distillers, Jan led yield improvements, fermentation optimisation, and innovations in cask management, reducing process variability and enhancing operational performance. He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering focused on gin distillation modelling, alongside a Master's in Brewing and Distilling, where he developed deep expertise in spirit quality assessment and sensory profiling. Jan is also the founder of ResearchScan a weekly research intelligence newsletter curating peer-reviewed science as well as patent insights for technical professionals across the beverage alcohol industry. I am so excited for you to get into today’s episode. There is just so much we covered in this episode! We spoke about the world of research and development, like how cask charring methods can show little analytical difference yet clear sensory differences, Plus, we dive into the future of distilling tech, automation, and how to stay ahead of industry trends. Jan's dram for the episode was an Invergordon 14 Year Old a Single Grain Whisky and for myself, I chose the 41.185 Dancing Dirty from SMWS. So pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink and join Jan and I for Data and Drams.

    The Science of Spirits with Jan Hodel-Keane, Founder of ResearchScan
  5. 14 July ·  Bonus

    Pouring Season 2: The Tech Behind the Boardroom & the Bottle

    Welcome to Data and Drams, the podcast where we distill the best careers in tech and the incredible craft behind the bottle. I'm your host, Sarah. By day, I'm a tech delivery manager, which means my actual job is acting as a translator.I sit right between developers and executives, two groups who are technically speaking the same language, but practically they're speaking completely different ones. My job is to make sure they actually understand each other. Now, as it turns out, that translator skill is exactly what inspired season two.Look, there are hundreds of tech and leadership podcasts. There are hundreds of whisky podcasts, but there isn't a single show that puts both worlds in the same room and asks them what they have to teach each other. Data and Drams isn't a niche. It's a bridge, and like any bridge, they carry traffic in both directions.Forget the standard interview format. This isn't a panel, it's not a talking head show, and it's definitely not a polished sit-down where someone recites their LinkedIn bio while I nod along.And genuinely, that would be boring for everyone involved. Instead, I'm putting aside the emails, the meetings, and the corporate speak to pour a dram, because whisky does something to a conversation. It slows it down, it strips away the corporate performance and makes it real.Every episode starts with my guest's preferred dram, and if it's way too early for them, I'll gladly have one for both of us. Now, I want to be very clear, I am not an expert on this show, and I never claim to be (though I am slowly making my way through a diploma in single malt). My goal is simply to be the most curious person in the room, learning in public and bringing you along the journey. In season one, we broke down boardroom barriers with tech execs. For season two, we're expanding. We're running two distinct alternating streams to show how a complex data transformation is actually a lot like a process of moving from grain to bottle. Here is how the two streams will work. We have the executive barrel. This is where I sit down with C-suite leaders, CIOs, VPs, and tech founders. We go way beyond the CV and into the raw, unpolished stories, the projects that nearly went sideways, the leadership frameworks that actually work, and the lessons forged in real-world hurdles and not corporate case studies.And our second stream is the master blend. This is where the spirits industry gets to tell its own data story.I'm talking to master blenders, distillery operators, and researchers who are using predictive fermentation, IoT sensors on stills, and e-commerce data to scale a craft that's been done the same way for hundreds of years.The tech behind your favourite bottle is massive, and no one else is talking about it. When you place these two worlds side by side, you start to realise how much they actually share.A relentless willingness to iterate until something incredible emerges. Yet historically, both industries have a habit of gatekeeping and excluding the very people who have the most to offer them.Data and Drams exists to break those barriers down, open those doors, and make both rooms accessible to anyone and everyone.We are demystifying data one dram at a time. So whether you're here for the Executive Barrel or the Master Blend, or like me, you're part of the growing group that loves both. Pull up a chair, get comfortable, and let's pour a glass. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss a single drop.

    Pouring Season 2: The Tech Behind the Boardroom & the Bottle
  6. 12 Feb

    I Shall Either Find a Way or Make One: Data, People and Transformation

    Welcome to Data & Drams. In this episode, I was joined by Craig Hayes, an IT and general business executive who has spent the last 25 years building and managing global teams at an immense scale. From leading Fraud and Risk operations in Cape Town to serving as Senior Vice President of Business Operations for Mastercard, Craig has navigated some of the most complex transaction chains in the world. He’s now the Head of IT Transformation at Sonic Healthcare, where he is currently driving a global uplift of 50,000 seats across seven countries.  We dove into his core belief that data and people are the only two variables that matter when you’re trying to achieve the impossible.  Craig offers a rare look at the 'changing landscape' of IT leadership, specifically how we foster resiliency and adaptability in teams that are spread across five continents. Whether you're curious about the future of the Brisbane tech scene, the philosophical side of AI, or just want to hear a great story about historical figures over whisky, this episode is for you. We poured a Bunnahabhain 12-Year-Old. Hailing from the shores of Islay, this dram is famous for its unpeated coastal character. While many Islay whiskys hit you dose of campfire smoke, the Bunnahabhain is more nuanced offering notes of hazelnut, dried fruit, and a subtle sea salt. Craig’s perspective on the 'human side' of global infrastructure is something every leader needs to hear. So pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and join Craig and I for Data & Drams.

    I Shall Either Find a Way or Make One: Data, People and Transformation
  7. 29 Jan

    From High Seas to High Security: Gabriela’s Journey of Resilience and Reinvention

    Welcome back to Data and Drams! In this episode, I’m joined by Gabriela, a cybersecurity leader whose career path started not in a server room, but on the open ocean. Transitioning from the maritime industry to the front lines of digital defence, she brings a unique perspective forged in the high-stakes environment of cruise ships, where risk management, resilience, and adaptability aren't just corporate buzzwords, but daily necessities. We dive deep into the terrifying turning point that changed everything, a personal cyber breach that wiped out her life savings. Rather than backing down, Gabriela turned to mastering cyber forensics and completely reinventing her professional identity in a post-COVID world. In this conversation, we explore: How lessons from the sea apply to securing the cloud Why involving cybersecurity early in the project lifecycle is the ultimate game-changer. Her impactful work with Cybersecurity Champions of Tomorrow, dedicated to empowering the next wave of cyber professionals. For our dram of choice, we poured The Balvenie 14-Year-Old Caribbean Cask. It was a fitting tribute to Gabriela’s maritime roots in the Caribbean and her current role in cyber, smooth and sweet on the surface, but backed by a rich, oaky resilience and a spicy finish that lingers long after the first sip. Much like her leadership style, it is a perfect blend of old-world discipline and new-world adaptability. So, if you’re ready to dive in, pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and join Gabriela and I for Data & Drams.

    From High Seas to High Security: Gabriela’s Journey of Resilience and Reinvention

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Both the tech industry and the world of whisky can feel like gated communities, intimidating and complex. Data & Drams is here to open the door. Join Sarah as she distills the technical truth behind your favourite spirits and the career journeys of the world’s top tech executives. From on-site distillery tours exploring the "data behind the dram" to informal, speakeasy-style interviews with CTOs and Founders, we bridge the gap between craftsmanship and code. Savour the Data. Stay for the Drams.

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