French brandy might have a bit of an image problem. Compared to its cousins – flashy, suave cognac and cultured, studious armagnac – the category could be seen as a bit of an amorphous relic. If that rings true, well, maybe you’ve not been paying attention to St-Rémy, which, under the leadership of master blender Cécile Roudaut, is helping to bring the category into modern…

Over the past decade sustainability has gone from being a box-ticking exercise for drinks brands to an essential part of planning for future production and marketing. As an industry we started by saving turtles with the ban on plastic straws, which migrated to shaming the use of single-use plastic. From there, the focus turned to reducing carbon footprints and planting trees to offset emissions, and…

Marc Álvarez possesses the best bar in the world. At the World’s 50 Best Bars ceremony in Singapore last month Barcelona’s Sips, which he co-owns with Simone Caporale, took the number one spot, immortalising the venue and its owners in an exclusive hospitality hall of fame. It marks a rapid rise to the top for a bar that opened scarcely more than two years ago…

The sun shone the entire week of last month’s TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes. The beautiful, warm weather reflected the upbeat mood of most of the 7,385 visitors who flocked to the travel retail industry’s biggest annual get-together, a 23% increase over last year’s attendance figures. The event attracted a record number of buyers and landlords, a vital sector and a clear sign that decision-makers…

In September of this year, the brand relaunched in the UK with a new look and attitude, Drinks International caught up with Stein to find out why he set his sights on armagnac. “The way I see it, armagnac had always been there, and everybody liked it, but commercially, it had never had its breakthrough,” explains Stein. “So, it is fair to say that not…

Michele Mariotti is a hotel bar veteran beyond his years. Having cut his teeth at some of London’s finest hotel bars, namely the American Bar at the Savoy and The Blue Bar at the Berkeley, he’s now found his way, via Singapore, to heading up one of the most lauded hotel bar programmes in the world at Gleneagles, in Perthshire, Scotland. “One of the things…

Bartending isn’t a game of individuals, but there’s no escaping the fact Simone Caporale has now won the World’s 50 Best Bars five times. He seems to excel as one half of a pair: his four wins at Artesian from 2012-2015 coming with Alex Kratena, and now this year with Sips, which he shares with Marc Alverez.  We can talk about…