More Fun. More Feisty. More Good Drinks.
Why we need More Good Drinks and less booze-shame, honest writing on drinks culture and stories that connect the dots between human connection and industry.
So I wrote a little article this week about the Michelin thing, and there were a lot of new faces around here. Not to mention, sometimes it’s important to explain things. So here’s a little manifesto to help you find your way around More Good Drinks!
There’s a moment—you know the one—where the liquid hits the glass just so, the sound inviting you in before you’ve even lifted it to your lips. Maybe it’s whisky unfurling like smoke signals across crystal. Maybe it’s wine exhaling three continents of sunlight. Maybe it’s that first cold beer after the kind of week that ages you in dog years.
And here’s what happens next: someone asks what you’re drinking, and suddenly you’re not just tasting—you’re talking. At first it’s hops and juniper and forest floor and ‘have you tried this one yet?’ but then it’s ‘how was your day?’ and ‘what are we going to do about that? and ‘how can I help, mate?’
That conversation? That’s where More Good Drinks lives. In the space where curiosity meets craft, where a sip becomes a story, and where what we drink reveals who we are.
You Can’t Miss What You Don’t Have
Most drinks writing falls into two camps now: breathless press releases where journalism is also marketing activity, or coded insider language that might make you feel like you need a degree to order a drink. And then there’s the booze-shame, the feeling that even if you drink responsibly, we’re just not meant to have too much fun with drinks right? Except I’m obsessed with peach soda and there’s nothing guilty in that.
Here’s what gets lost in that gap: the story.
New Zealand’s media landscape has already retracted. If you’re in your twenties, you don’t remember when food and drink journalism was rich and deep—that’s what TikTok is for now. You can’t miss what you never had.
But I think that makes great stories even more meaningful. In an ocean of 60-second hot takes and sponsored content, journalism that actually goes deep stands out. Writing that takes time, asks hard questions, and follows threads until they make sense cuts through the noise precisely because so little else does.
Independent journalism—the kind where someone spends an hour with a distiller instead of rewriting a press release, where calling out false advertising is still possible—comes at a cost in a world that despises a paywall.
But you deserve writing that cuts through the marketing, explains why something tastes the way it does, introduces you to the humans behind what you’re drinking, and respects your intelligence without requiring a sommelier certificate.
That’s what More Good Drinks does.
The Joy & The Technique
Our mission is simple: More Good Drinks.
First, the joy. Drinks should be fun. Alcoholic content shouldn’t impact fun content. Remember when you used to put Raro straight on your tongue, seeing how sugar you could dissolve in a litre of water before your teeth buzzed? Debating whether Milo was better hot or cold? The irresistible thrill of a fizzy from the dairy on a hot summer’s day when you’d been playing with your mates. The relationship between good drinking experiences and fun started the first time you tried slipping Mentos into a Coke bottle. And you might have even tried adding bubbles to your wine using the Soda Stream you got for Christmas. Then maybe you explored the first sip of a perfectly made Negroni and laughed til you cried at how it made your sinuses burn. The discovery that you love mezcal when you thought you hated tequila. The wine that tastes exactly like summer in Central Otago because that’s precisely what it is. Pleasurable—even if it’s cold fruit juice when you’re sick or a Golden Pash from the servo. Memory, senses, taste buds alive.
Then, the technique. You’re spending your money and time—you deserve honest answers. Which alternative nootropic beverages are genuinely innovative and which are expensive snake oil? What does “low-intervention winemaking” actually mean? Why are craft distilleries struggling and what does that mean for what’s available to you? Wouldn’t you love it if drinks menus were as thoroughly reviewed as what comes across the pass?
We celebrate the good. We call out the rubbish. We explain the complex without dumbing it down.
Who’s Behind This
I’ve spent two decades in this industry—tasting, yes, but mostly learning. I’ve worked inside New Zealand’s tourism strategy machinery, consulted for brands navigating impossible markets, judged spirits competitions from Auckland to London, and been shortlisted for international awards alongside writers I’ve studied for years.
I’ve facilitated whisky regulation negotiations and led Food Writers New Zealand as food writing has undergone significant change. I’ve served cocktails on breakfast television and written analysis that makes industry leaders uncomfortable.
But here’s what matters more than credentials: I’m still curious. Still discovering. Still excited when someone makes something genuinely new. Still frustrated when industry has short-term vision.
Dave Broom taught me you can be technically rigorous and poetically expressive at once. That expertise should illuminate, not intimidate. That’s the approach here.
What You’ll Find: Three Ways We Pour
1. This Tastes Good:
Honest reviews that help you navigate the shelf. We separate genuine innovation from expensive marketing. That $120 gin? We’ll tell you if it’s worth it or if you should spend $80 and save the rest. We’ll tell you the reason why this is no ordinary cocktail. Alternative beverages delivering impact versus adaptogens in pretty bottles. Non-alcoholic spirits that truly bottle complexity without ethanol. And occasionally we may give you a Best of the Best list of products that really caught our eye.
2. Drinks Leaders: Their Stories
The humans behind what we’re drinking. The distiller betting everything on a botanical no one’s heard of. The winemaker deciding whether to pour vintage down the drain or gamble on one more year. The bartender building a menu around ingredients most people throw away. The importer bringing you drinks with centuries of cultural meaning. The people making decisions that impact your fun and your options.
3. Full Pour: The Stories That Shape Our Liquid World
The big, complicated questions with real consequences:
Questions I’m asking right now: While France pours vintage down the drain and Australian vineyards rip out vines, New Zealand winemakers face a defining question—compete on volume or bet everything on quality?
Why hasn’t Western culture embraced tepache, horchata, and milk tea as culturally refined non-alcoholic options when they are entire beverage philosophies with centuries of story?
And for those in the industry, the bigger questions of strategy, food systems and how people are changing the way they engage with the drinks industry altogether. Those stories matter for everyone, because they are inevitably stories of culture being shaped and formed.
Why This Actually Matters
What we drink is how we connect. How we celebrate and commiserate. How we mark time and memory. How we welcome strangers and deepen friendships. How we signal identity and share culture.
A good drink is a time machine, a conversation starter, comfort and adventure at once. The visceral experience of tasting—that shock of flavour, that revelation of texture—is how we learn our world, how we understand place, how we connect with each other.
That deserves better than press releases and tasting notes. That deserves a bit of time. A bit of care.
What You’re Supporting
When you subscribed, you joined a community of curious food & drink lovers who refuse to settle. You’re supporting independent drinks journalism that answers to readers, not advertisers. And I haven’t even asked you for a dollar yet.
More Good Drinks exists because what’s good to drink should also be good for the people making it, good for the places it comes from, and part of a good life. But not so Good we forget that it’s meant to be fun.
Good product. Good taste. Good business. Good health.
Pull Up a Chair
If you’re a curious drinker who wants the stories behind the bottles, the truth beneath the marketing, the context that makes every sip richer—this is your table.
Pour yourself something good now.
Tash McGill is a drinks writer and industry consultant who’s spent twenty years learning this business from the inside out. IWSC Spirits Communicator Trophy finalist, former President of the NZ Food Writers Guild—but more importantly, still excited to discover something new in a glass.