It was in 1996 that the great Dale deGroff introduced the Cosmopolitan to the Rainbow Room list in New York – and Madonna was seen sipping it.
Two years later Jonathan Goodall describes the drink as “fiendishly trendy” in his book The Classic Bar & Cocktail.
That same year one Carrie Bradshaw and her gal pals started running around New York, talking about men, sex and fashion – mostly with a Cosmo in hand, in the US hit TV series Sex and the City.
They saw a brief resurgence in 2008, when the SATC film came out, at the end of the film, when they all have a Cosmopolitan, Miranda asks: “Why did we ever stop drinking these?” And Carrie replies: “’Cause everyone else started.”
Although the marriage of vodka, triple sec, cranberry juice and lime is not every bar’s favourite drink to serve, it has become one of the classics – in the modern sense of the word. And it’s PINK.
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