Last year’s heats, and the judging process that followed, led to no small amount of philosophical debate about the classics – their place in the modern era of bartending, the cyclical nature of cocktail trends, and indeed what makes a cocktail a classic in the ­first place. “It’s a can of worms, or nest of vipers, the question of what de­fines a classic cocktail,” says…

China’s sudden abandonment of its zero-Covid policy, announced in December last year, is gathering pace to the delight of the duty-free business. After three years of largely being cut off from the world, Xi Jinping’s China has dropped quarantine requirements for all international arrivals, delivering a massive boost for the wider travel retail industry, which has been starved of high-spending Chinese travellers since the pandemic…

Contemporary mixology has established the importance of high-quality ingredients, from the use of fresh fruit to premium spirits. Liqueurs are no exception. Long gone are the days when the word was a synonym for a poorly assembled extra-sweet spirit and, although production is still strictly regulated (EU states that a liqueur must have minimum of 15% abv and 100g/ litre of sugar), the market is…

With global consumption decreasing in volume terms, according to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, French wine is a category currently facing challenges, particularly those from the region of Bordeaux. Global consumption of Bordeaux wine decreased at a CAGR of 4% between 2016 and 2021, with more than 50% of 2021 volumes consumed domestically in France. Why Bordeaux? Selling 559 million bottles in 2021, for a value…

Premium mixers have generally been in huge growth over the past decade, but supply chain issues and inflation have proven sizeable hurdles for some of the major players. Fever-Tree, the global market leader and chart-topper in Drinks International’s Brands Report, experienced a tough 2021 with its stock price dropping 61%. However, increasing business overseas suggests strong growth on the horizon. One of the biggest driving…

For years we’ve talked about rhum agricole being the next ‘big thing’, yet we’re still waiting for some cataclysmic event which propels it into the mainstream. In 2014 cachaça was expected to flourish off the back of the World Cup in Brazil as well as the Olympic Games two years later, but no matter how many travelling fans enjoyed Caipirinhas, the spirit didn’t blossom in…

Baijiu exists in a singular space. Its absence in global markets gives it an air of obscurity, but this isn’t a niche product, it’s a populist juggernaut. Trying to comprehend the size of the baijiu category is like trying to grasp the scale of Jupiter by picturing the amount of Earths that would fit inside it. According to the IWSR in 2018, the last year…