drinksint.com JANUARY 2016 DRINKS INTERNATIONAL


27 ESPRESSO MARTINI


Dick Bradsell made the first – for a customer who wanted a drink that would “wake her up and fuck her up”. But the Espresso Martini also arouses and nullifies the senses at the world’s best bars, with 12% listing it among their regular roster. In two bars it is the top-selling classic. 50 Best Academy member Tristan


Stephenson, from


Worship Street


Whistling Shop, has written a book on coffee. He says: “I hate the practice of adding coffee liqueur to an Espresso Martini. You’re effectively making a coffee liqueur from scratch, so best to let the actual coffee sing loudest.”


28 TOM COLLINS


This age-old lemon and gin drink is about the most refreshing libation around. Most Tom Collins these days are children of the gin house pour, which at the world’s best bars is most likely to be Tanqueray or Beefeater.


Traditionalists insist the original recipe called for Old Tom gin (hence the name) and at Beaufort Bar, in


this year’s World’s 50 Best Bars, the ’tenders have been known to use Jensen’s Old Tom as the principal part of their Tom Collins recipe.


32 Clover Club


This pink-hued pre-Prohibition classic was invented in Philadelphia and is a top-10 favourite of 10% of the world’s top bars, according to our poll. Julie Reiner’s Brooklyn bar Clover Club – which is a five-time member of the World’s 50 Best Bars all-time – is, of course, named after the drink. The Brooklyn bar uses gin, dry vermouth, raspberry, lemon juice and egg white. But this is a fairly standard recipe that they’d be happy to throw together in most of the world’s best bars.


29 PIMM’S CUP


James Pimm’s fruit and gin liqueur was first made in 1823 and has since become part of the UK’s drinking furniture.


However, as subsequent owners have systematically downgraded the abv of the liqueur which forms the base of the broader cocktail, it has fallen a little out of the premium space of bartenders’ thinking. In The PDT Cocktail Book, Jim Meehan makes his with Pimm’s No.1 Cup, lemon juice, simple syrup and muddled cucumber slices, topped with ginger ale.


30 AMARETTO SOUR


Unexpectedly, the almondy Amaretto Sour is the no.1 best- selling classic at four of the 100 bars we spoke to. Indeed, a third of bars said that it was sold regularly and was their top serve. As an approachable sweet-sour drink, it’s a crowd pleaser and also flexible enough for modern twists. Bourbon gives the drink a little more power, but in its original form it is two shots of amaretto, lemon juice and egg


white, while Angostura bitters are optional.


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31 ZOMBIE


Tiki demigod Don the Beachcomber’s drink of the living dead is the Zombie, which is alive and kicking at the world’s best bars. Four bars


said it was their top-selling classic. Let’s take the recipe from tiki Mecca Smuggler’s Cove: Jamaican, demerara and Puerto Rican rums, grapefruit and lime juice, cinnamon syrup, falernum, grenadine, Angostura bitters, drops of Pernod and a mint sprig.


33 SIDECAR


Overtaking the Brandy Julep this year, the Sidecar is the second most likely brandy classic at the world’s best bars. The original was popular in France in the ’20s and first introduced in London by a man called Mr McGarry, no relation to the co-author of The Dead Rabbit Drinks Manual, from which we found this information. It was made simply from cognac, triple sec and lemon juice.


34 VESPER


With the Dry Martini and the Vodka Martini both in this list, their lovechild, the vodka-gin- based Vesper is something of a vote cannibal. Still, the Vesper is up five places on last year.


Bangkok bar Vesper makes a Silver Vesper with Tanqueray, Ketel One, “Italian aperitif” and orange bitters. Sadly it is not its number one tipple.


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