Hamish Smith talks us through the three-pronged assessment of the Bartenders’ Brand Awards.

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Lastly, you’ll look at the price and the financial particulars surrounding it. When all is said and done, you’re running a business that won’t meet the definition if the numbers don’t add up. At the BBAs we try to mimic this three-step thinking in our judging so we can provide the best possible guide to the best brands in the bar channel.

First comes the blind tasting, where our panels of bartenders score out of 50, considering aroma, complexity, taste and versatility in cocktails (where appropriate). Then the packaging is revealed and scored out of 25, and finally – taking into account the taste and design, coupled with abv and price – a value-for-money score is given, once again out of 25. Here, for ease and consistency, we work off RRPs. We then total up the scores to give an overall number out of 100, but we split out what each product received for each of our three assessments.

That way, if you’re a bar that prizes value for money over design, or taste over everything else, you can quickly see what works best for you. But it is the overall number that is the basis for our top-five lists, with the highest-scoring brand in each category given the not-too-shabby moniker of Category Champion and, the best of the best, the even loftier title of Supreme Champion.

So, who are the BBA judges? Well, they’re all pretty big names in the United Bar-dom, but they also have skills appropriate to each category, and are chosen for their experience or specialism. We invite six bartenders to join each Zoom session, with each category having a chair – a bartender with considerable experience in the area – and a Class host to help things along.

The sessions are lively affairs, with no quarter given to products deemed short of the mark. Indeed, when you look at the BBAs scoring versus other competitions, it’s clear that our bartender judges are pretty hard to please – medals are hard won.

This year only one brand scored as high as 90 points out of 100 and the average score across all products was 69/100. Only 20 received gold medals across our three measures and, drilled down, 25% of products received a gold medal in taste, 31% got gold for design, and 27% took top honours for value for money. In other words, medals mean more at the BBAs.

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JUDGES

Aidan Beaumont,

Andreas Grammatikopoulos

Angelos Bafas

Anistatia Miller

Anna King

Cai Anderson

Camille Vidal

Connie Cain

Courtney Dowd

Courtney Francis

Deano Moncrieffe

Demi Harper

Eve Green

Fredrik Olsson

Georgi Radev

Graham Suttle

Hebe Richardson

Jake Burger

Jamie Lewis

John Ennis

Josh Powell

Julia Thomson

Kai Aria

Kevin Armstrong

Lucia Montanelli

Markus Basset

Mason Rowley

Matteo Pesce

Michael Bower

Mike Baxter

Mike Redman

Noah Villeneuve

Oscar Angeloni

Ozzy Ostap Giagkniouk

Rachel Orange

Rachel Reid

Sam Porter

Siân Buchan

Simone Crepaldi

Sly Augustin

Steve the Barman