Spark up a fat one,
Fidel. Once again the best-selling rums in the world’s best bars is the
one half owned by the Castro’s. It’s
been a tale of towering global sales for Havana Club ever since the Cubans said
hello to their little friend Pernod Ricard.
The latest Havana Club- Bacardi bout was won on points rather than
knockout blows. In the end, 5% more bars fell into the Havana Club camp rather than
that of Bacardi’s. Either way, only 20%
of bars polled didn’t list either Havana Club or Bacardi among their top- three
selling rums. This year the Daiquiri and
Mojito were both in the top 10 best-selling classics and while Bacardi might
argue its heritage here, if you want to make an authentic Daiquiri the way they
do at La Floridita or a Mojito at La Bodeguita, you’re probably best using a
brand that’s legal in Cuba.
Diageo, meanwhile, is
on a different strategy – Zacapa is for the bars you want to go to, Captain
Morgan for bars you don’t. The group
has a few other rums, naturally, but in the bars we polled, Zacapa was their
smooth operator, talking its way into podium rum position in a third of
the 100. The hurdle for Zacapa is
stepping off the back bar on to the rack. Only 10% of responders said the Guatemalan rum is their default pouring rum. Yet Zacapa is the trending rum in nearly 20% of polled bars. The rum aged in the clouds looks to be floating in the right direction.
Diplomatico from Venezuela is on the ascent too. It is fourth among the best sellers and second in the trending list, where 15% of bars said it was the hot rum brand right now.
The World's 50 Best Bars Annual
Report 2016
First Things First, we should say that the World’s 50 Best Bars Annual
Report is the new name for the Brands Report and the Cocktail Report combined. We figured this body of research could be
presented in a singular report every January, denoting a full stop, not a
comma, to industry’s year of business.
We’re pleased to say that 28 of The World’s 50 Best Bars took part in
this survey. Not a bad return, given there’s no prize at the end – except this
invaluable report, of course. But we
didn’t stop there. The top 50 are the inner circle, but our Academy vouched for
542 bars in total last year. Of these
we contacted the top-ranked 250, widening the pool to gain greater global insight
and reduce the risk of anomalous results.
In total we
gathered 100 completed
questionnaires, which we feel an accurate representation
of the best bars in the world. You’ll
see below a list of all the Top 50 bars that took part and those that have featured
in previous lists. This year we had
respondents from bars from 28 cities in
15 countries and six regions.
Europe,
as a continent of 50 countries and a
powerhouse of the bar industry – made up the largest share, but we have strong
representation from North America, Asia and Latin America, and a sprinkling of
bars from Australasia and Africa & Middle East. This distribution is consistent with the
geographical mix of bars at the top end of the business, as evidenced by our
World’s 50 Best Bars poll.
We asked bars’
owners and head bartenders to rank their top three best-selling brands in each
category. In previous years we have
only asked for the number one best seller, but in learning the top three, we
are able to get a better picture of sales. The best-selling spirits, liqueurs,
champagne, beer or water can be measured in bottles used, which provides the
most tangible insight into the consuming habits in elite bars. But, as we know, a best-selling brand, even
in the best bars in the world, earns its place on more than taste. The best bartenders won’t serve any old
hooch but they are also running a business. So we too wanted to know the brands
that are not necessarily doing huge volumes but have cool-appeal right now. So the trending lists – to borrow from
Twitter parlance – are made up of brands customers are increasingly asking
for.
These could be
offering innovation, or might have benefited from a clever marketing ploy. It could
be down to word of mouth, or maybe a bartender’s recommendation. It’s possible that trending brands also
feature as best sellers in a given category.
But more likely, they are smaller operators that aren’t the hulking
front men of large portfolios and have become on-trend in spite of an inferior
inability to incentives.
We have also collated cross-category top 10s. Bartenders’
Choice is one for the purists as it is untouched by the meddling hand of
profitability or the whim of consumer trend. It’s here we see what bartenders themselves
prize most. We also have an overall Best-Selling Brands and overall Top
Trending lists, which too pit brands across the spirits spectrum, rather than
category by category. Independent,
unsponsored, impartial and compiled using a robust methodology, we feel this is
the sort of research that makes the drinks industry a better-informed
place.
Read More at http://www.drinksint.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/5815/Annual_Report:_Rum_Top_10_.html
The origins of Botran stretch back to the
early 20th century. Outside of Central
America, Botran could appear to be a relative newcomer appear among dark
premium rums. Managing director Frank Quinones
said that brand began to look into the big international markets in the 1990’s. Given the overwhelming perception among
consumers that rum was just a party drink that people barely perceived as
Caribbean and very likely called Bacardi.
This fact lead Botran to be part of a tough uphill job to becoming a
part of the market. Things have started
to change, but very slowly.
The
origins of Botran stretch right back to the early 20th century when the family
gave up distilling in Spain like so many others of the era and migrated to
Guatemala. They began making rum on a small scale, but in the 1940’s the
Botrans joined forces with four other family distillers to form the Industrias
Licoreras de Guatemala (ILG). For me
it’s amazing they’re still together,” says Quinones. “Right now the family’s
into its fourth generation, and it’s still surviving and thriving.”. In
July 2011, when its three-year distribution deal came to an end, Diageo bought
a 50% stake in Zacapa rum from ILG for £150 million. Quinones has no doubt Diageo’s involvement is
helping to put Guatemalan rum on the map, but he points out the two brands are
totally separate in the way they are produced and marketed. Botran’s
quality begins with the sugar cane grown in volcanic soil, adding a mineral
richness to the syrup, or virgin honey. As a vertically integrated company, it has
its own plantations which supply the majority of its needs.
It has even planted different varieties of
sugar cane that are harvested at different dates to provide the master blender
with more options. Maybe one day they
will go a step further and start producing varietal rums like wine. “It’s
possible,” says Quinones. “We’re not getting into that yet, but we have the
capacity to do it, so we may do something in the future.” The
family’s Spanish roots inspired the use of a Sherry-style solera system and,
while it’s not unique to Botran, their take on it is. “We call it a dynamic
solera process,” he explains. “The concept is all about blending the old with
the new, and its ‘dynamic’ because the rum doesn’t sit still in one barrel for
years.” This is a maturation method of mind-boggling complexity. The new spirit spends a while in American
whiskey barrels before being tipped into a blending vat to marry with older
rums. It is then refilled into the
Bourbon barrels that have been re-charred in the meantime. After a couple of
years it goes back into the blending vat to mix with more old rum before the
whole process is repeated, first with Sherry and then with Port casks. Quinones admits it is very labor-intensive
and costly, but worth it. One consolation is that because the warehouses are at
a cool 2,300-2,400 meters in altitude, the angels’ share is fairly modest by rum
standards. Were they down near sea level the company’s Botran Reserva, aged for
up to 15 years, and the 18 year-old Botran Solera 1893 would have all but
evaporated.
