Born in 1972, Martin Stein lived through some dark periods in the history of the cocktail. He owned a late night bar in the heyday of Caipirinha and Sex on the Beach and since that time considers every morning without disastrous news a win in the books. In 2025 he and his friend and colleague Juliane Reichert, journalist and 50Best Academy Chair, founded Drinktales, the first German PR-Agency specialized on bars. He is still a freelance writer and journalist, mostly for Mixology Magazine Germany, and travels the world, searching for the legendary liquid Eldorado. He is the publisher of the German edition of David Wondrich’s „Imbibe!“ and an avid collector of ancient cocktail books. Martin ran a half marathon in 2022 and won’t stop bringing it up.