First published in CLASS Autumn 2022

Class Autumn edition, celebrating 25 years of the magazine, has now launched. 

Access the digital magazine here. Not subscribed? Bartenders can sign up for a digital or hard copy here.

Inside this issue

Named after cocktail, liqueur and speciality spirit, Class was the first of its kind – a magazine that put the then embryonic cocktail culture front and centre. It was the pen of the pioneering bartenders of the late nineties, documenting and shaping what would later be labelled the start of the ‘second golden era’ of cocktail and bar culture.

Five editors, four publishers, a word count well into the millions and 25 years later - and Class is still here. We prefer to look forward, but it’d be remiss if we didn’t exhume some of the more memorable moments of Class’s history from the people who were there to witness them – you’ll find a guide to 25 years of Class in this edition.  

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Otherwise, this autumn edition is not looking in, but out. Edmund Weil tells us how to prepare our bars for the recession that lurks on the horizon, while Hannah Lanfear has a piece on the issue of training bartenders but not managers.  

For those of you looking at those available sites and thinking about making the step into ownership, Mike Baxter gives us the truth about what the job really involves – it’s probably not what you think.  

With recruitment continuing to be a drag on progress, we can’t afford to lose the talent we have in our ranks. In that vein, Anna Sebastian addresses the brain drain of bartenders to brands, a trend in which female talent seems disproportionately affected.  

Meanwhile our liquid incursions take us to fermentation in whisky, proprietary spirits, new ways to mix cognac, the process of cavitation, spirit and juice combinations, Batavia Arrack and moscatel de Setubal. All that and more on cocktails, liqueurs and speciality spirits.