BARCELONA . O1 . 5O Best Awards Night
We were in Barcelona for the 50 Best Cocktail Bars Awards: Alexandra was making cocktails with Altos, Claudio was taking pictures behind people’s back and Vincent was busy meeting with a Very Important Friend.
THE AWARDS
THE 50 BEST
Awards are the Oscars of Bartending, the Cannes of Shakers, the MET Gala of Martini Geeks. As any “Best” list, a good deal of what makes it popular are its critics:
“I can’t believe [name-of-your-favorite-Bar] is not even in the top 100?”,
“I was at [name-of-a-Startender-in-the-list] Bar and the service was awful, how can they be in the top 10 ???”
“It is just a list, I don’t really care” (said by a bar owner that will follow the ranking with horror-movie-eyes and experience schadenfreude every time a friend’s bar is ranked below his own).
Big change this year, for the first time in its 13-years history the celebration left London and was hosted in Barcelona (spoiler alert, this year Best Bar is in Barcelona).
We were there invited by our friends from Altos Tequila, for which Alexandra made a special recipe to serve through the night, a highball called “Monopoli”
Altos Tequila
Italicus Bergamot Liqueur
Verjus
Pernod Absinthe
Soda water
The other cocktail was prepared by Filippo Faedda, the rockstar Head Bartender of Salmon Guru, Madrid that won the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award in 2021.
During the night, Claudio decided to take a different perspective at the celebration and started to take pictures of people’s attires, especially focusing on backs and details. The result is a “behind the scenes” series.
You can find the full series here
HIGHLIGHTS
SOME AWARDS
Worth mentioning:
Mexico was once again one of the stars of the list, with our dearest friends from Limantour winnning the "Remy Martin Legend of the List Award”, the amazing team from Hanky Panky winning the “Michter's Art of Hospitality Award”, Handshake ranked number 11, Brujas and Zapote entered the top 100 list !
Barcelona had two bars in the top 3: Paradiso at Number 1 and Sips at number 3! You can read about our visit here.
Jean Trinh won the “Altos Bartenders’ Bartender Award”
Our Parisian friends from Little Red Door won the “Ketel One Sustainable Bar Award” for their “Flourish” program and took the 5th position in the List, their best ranking ever! We were with them during the celebration and can tell the emotions (a mix of excitement, pride and disbelief) were running high !
Master, Mentor and true icon Agostino Perrone won the “Roku Industry Icon Award”
You can see the full Awards list here
