So if you ever wondered what brands are the best bartenders in the world favour, look no further.

Every day for the next two weeks we will bring you a new category and to kick us off we have gin. 

We quizzed the class of 2013 on the brands moving through their bars. Overall we polled 100 of the top 250 bars mentioned in The World’s 50 Best Bars 2013 survey.

We asked which are best sellers and which are catching the imaginations of consumers in the trending list. There are many big names and a few new ones, too.

BEST SELLING

Diageo’s Tanqueray and Chivas Bros’ (Pernod Ricard’s) Beefeater have traded places in the best-selling list this year and Bombay Sapphire has hung on to third place.

Watch Bombay’s position next year, when its new distillery at Laverstoke Mill has been visited by more bartenders and journalists. It’s an exciting time for the brand.

It has a home to call its own and it looks beautiful – as it should, being designed by Olympic cauldron designer Thomas Heatherwick.

Plymouth has dropped off both lists, which is a bit weird because it is always mooted as bartenders’ favourite gin. It seems, though, that it is not the gin du jour.

Perhaps there are so many new brands out there it has not stood out this year.

Gordon’s is still on the best selling list, though it has never appeared on the trending list – just goes to show that trends don’t always become best sellers.

Broker’s, Blue Ribbon, Fords, No 3 and Monkey 47 are all newcomers since we changed the formula last year, though Monkey 47 did trend in 2012.

TRENDING

It seems there is no stopping the mighty Hendrick’s as it tops the trending poll, having finished second place last year.

That little brown bottle of cucumbery joy is still igniting the tastebuds of consumers and, though the proliferation of gin brands means their extra botanicals are not so unusual anymore, it is still hugely popular.

Never one to let the grass grow under her feet, Hendrick’s master distiller Lesley Gracie embarked on a journey to find a new unusual botanical.

She came home from Venezuela with Scorpion’s Tail, a plant from the Guayana Highlands that is used to pacify stomach upsets.

Fords was launched in September 2012 and, though parent company The Eighty Six Co is based in New York, the gin is distilled at Thames Distillers in London.

It’s a nine-botanical number and, as well as the usual line up, jasmine flower makes the cut. 

To see how we did it, go to page 2.

HOW WE DID IT

The World’s 50 Best Bars has grown considerably over the past few years. The Academy of voters continues to expand and thanks to their votes, we think we’ve built up a pretty fantastic list of top bars and bartenders from all over the world. It’s still growing and long may that continue.

Last year, this growth and subsequent success of the World’s 50 Best Bars allowed us to reinvent the way we conduct this brands survey and we began asking this list of elite bars what they were selling.

To create an even better global picture of popular brands, we polled 100 of the top 250 bars. We used independent research company Leslie Henry Marketing & Research to do the polling.

Among the bars that responded this year is the Best Bar in the World – the Artesian in London – as well as a whole host of other great bars from around the globe. They include Black Pearl in Melbourne, Schumann’s in Munich, Employees Only in New York, Bar Hive Five in Tokyo, Floreira Atlantico in Buenos Aires, Le Forum in Paris, Quinary in Hong Kong, Delicatessen in Moscow, Dry Martini in Barcelona and Tippling Club in Singapore, as well as many other top venues.

The team at Leslie Henry 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. It indicates a trend – and sometimes trends turn into best sellers down the line. There have been a few moves this year and a few brands have fallen from the list. In their place, we welcome several new brands that are riding the wave of popularity with both bartenders and consumers.

We also asked this crack team of bar experts to name their favourite spirit for a number of classic cocktails. So, if you want to know which tequila tops the poll for a world class Margarita and which rum wins the tussle for the best Mojito, you can see those results on pages.