World's 50 Best Bars Brands Report: Aperitifs

Europeans enjoy a little something to whet their appetite. Here are the favourite aperitifs of The World's 50 Best Bars on day 12 of the Brands Report. 

Sadly we don’t have a great aperitif tradition in the UK. On the rest of our fine continent, though, it’s a different story. The Italians enjoy a little snifter to prepare themselves for food so it’s no surprise to see the likes of Campari, Aperol and Martini in the best-sellers. 

Then there are the gins – the champion spirit of the aperitif cocktail. Think Martinis, Vespers and Negronis. It’s good to see a champagne brand on there though we always associate Veuve with rich brioche and biscuity notes.

We expected to see an apple-fresh sparkler on the list, one that perhaps hasn’t undergone malolactic fermentation and therefore still contains some of those malo (Latin for apple) characteristics. 



How we did it

Since we relaunched the World’s 50 Best Bars, we think we’ve built up a pretty fantastic list of top bars and phenomenal bartenders from all over the world. 

To create an even better global picture, we also polled 100 of the top 200 bars. When I say ‘we’, it was actually an independent research company called Leslie Henry Marketing & Research.

It’s still growing, make no mistake – and we feel really quite excited about it. So excited in fact, that this year we decided to reinvent the way we conduct the artist formerly known as Hot Bar Brands by polling our very own top 50.

Voices from the team at Leslie Henry could be heard through telephone receivers from Melbourne to Budapest, Edinburgh to Singapore. The team asked the top bars which brands were best-sellers and which were – to borrow from Twitter – trending.

A trending brand might not be doing the same volumes as a best-seller but it’s a brand that customers are increasingly asking for. We also included a couple of new categories this year – champagne and water – as well as expanding the cocktail questions to include the likes of aperitifs and after-dinner drinks. The idea is to paint as accurate a picture of what is being consumed in bars around the world as possible.

Respondents – to use the fancy terminology – included bar owners and bartenders from the likes of the best bar in the world, the Artesian, London; PDT, New York; Nightjar, London; Bramble, Edinburgh: Employees Only, New York; Dry Martini, Barcelona; Black Pearl, Melbourne; Asoka, Cape Town; American Bar at the Savoy, London; Tippling Club, Singapore; Palmer & Co, Sydney; Boutiq Bar, Budapest; Chainaya Tea & Cocktails, Russia and Schumann’s Bar, Munich.

Let us know what you think of the survey: lucy.britner@drinksint.com