Vermont-born Ivy Mix, co-founded Brooklyn’s landmark cocktail bar Leyenda in 2015, won the “American Bartender of the Year” Spirited Award in 2015 and launched the women-only charity contest Speed Rack. After Leyenda’s closure on 29 March 2025, she now focuses on her bottle shop FIASCO! and wine bar Whoopsie Daisy.
Raised in Tunbridge, Vermont, Mix studied art and philosophy at Bennington College. A gap year in Antigua (Guatemala) introduced her to mezcal at Café No Sé, igniting a fascination with agave spirits. Back in New York, she tended bar at Fort Defiance before mentor Julie Reiner hired her for Lani Kai and later the Clover Club.
In May 2015 she and Reiner opened Leyenda, Coctelería de Barrio—a pan-Latin bar on Smith Street. The venue earned two James Beard nominations for Outstanding Bar Program and spots in GQ, Eater and Drinks International’s top-bar lists. After nearly a decade, Leyenda shut its original doors on 29 March 2025, the owners citing plans to relocate.
Mix’s advocacy runs through Speed Rack (founded 2011 with Lynnette Marrero), a global speed-bartending competition that has raised almost US $2 million for breast-cancer research and won twin Spirited Awards for Philanthropy and World’s Best Bar Mentor (2019).
Her book Spirits of Latin America (Ten Speed Press, 2020) won an IACP Award and a 2021 Spirited Award for “Best New Book on Drinks Culture”. In the same period she opened FIASCO! Wine + Spirits (2021) in Crown Heights—praised by Imbibe and InsideHook—and, three blocks away, the natural-wine bar Whoopsie Daisy (May 2024).
