We take you through the best-selling classic cocktails of the year
from North and South America to Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australasia. Bars are tied together by these age-old recipes that are so good they demand to be recreated. Sometimes because customers ask for them, but mostly because these are the drinks that occupy a hallowed place in the heart of the global bartending community. It’s our aim to print a list each year which tells us which of the famous classic recipes are in fashion and if any considered-lost drinks have been revived.
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When you look at the hundreds of classics out there, a list of the top 50 seemed a good place to start. We asked our 100 elite bars to rank their top 10 best-selling classics, to which we applied an incremental weighting from 1-10 and created a list. For some bars these will be iterations of the original recipe, for others twisted versions, but we take the view that if it is sold as a Sazerac, it is a Sazerac.
In this vein we append each cocktail with a recipe: some originals, some from famous industry figures, some from the menus and books of the 100 elite bars we polled.
reativity is the central pillar of the world’s best bars, yet there are classic cocktails that unite them
THE WORLD’S 50 BEST- SELLING CLASSICS
2 NEGRONI
The Negroni was a top 10 best-selling classic in more than two-thirds of our 100 bars, and again second to the Old Fashioned. It is the most popular gin cocktail out there. Don’t mess with the recipe, says received wisdom, including Gaz Regan. It’s a third, a third, a third of Campari, sweet
vermouth and gin. And for Count Negroni’s sake, stirred, not shaken.
Old Fashioned 1
As last year, the Old Fashioned is anything but at the world’s best bars. Three-quarters of bars polled said it was among their top 10 best-selling classics and a quarter said it was their number one. Our bars opt for bourbon, but The World’s 50 Best Bars host David Wondrich suggests rye would probably have been the likely choice way back when. He goes with: 1 sugar cube – wetted with three dashes of Angostura Bitters and a little soda – crushed, stirred with a large ice cube and two ounces of rye.
MANHATTAN 3
Up a place from last year, the Manhattan was in the top 10 in half the bars we polled, but rarely is it the top classic. Its origin is an enigma but heading to NYC for a recipe can’t be far wrong. Jim Meehan of PDT suggests rye whiskey, sweet vermouth and two dashes of Angostura, stirred with ice, strained into a chilled coupe and garnished with brandied cherries.
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