9 Cocktail and Drink Trends of 2023
Smartblends cocktail and drink trend predications for 2023.
It’s that time of year again! That time of year when I create a list of the predicated trends for the year ahead.
Little later then usual. I mean, we’re already 3 months into the year. But what can I say! I’ve been in Tel-Aviv filming a cocktail course (which has now been released, check it out) and this year has seemingly flew by. Seems like only yesterday I was batching up my mulled wine for Christmas. Where has the year gone?
Anyway, better late then never, lets get into it.
Don’t fancy reading? Watch this article instead
#1 Showtime!
You may have noticed that in particular bars when ordering a cocktail you get more than a drink. You get a performance. Magical cocktail garnishes, smoke, fire. A story with every drink. A conceptual menu where each cocktail connects.
This is all part of the theatre in bars. These bartenders see the bar as a stage to perform as opposed to a counter used to make drinks.
This is something that we will see more of in 2023.
With consumers expanding their knowledge of drinks, and the cost of living on the rise, people don’t want to spend their hard earned money on a cocktail that they can make themselves at home. Instead, what they’re paying for is the drinking experience.
Cocktails are becoming a treat and consumers want something to talk about. So going forward, what’s going to be most successful will not be “come to our bar and try a tasty cocktail” it’ll be “come to our bar and let us take you on a cocktail experience”
A few ideas to get started on this ‘theatre’ with drinks are as follows;
Concept menus: Menus based on a certain period in time, culture, or art.
An aspect of consumer involvement: A great example of this would be 2 separate bottles where the person drinking the cocktail have to mix it themselves, or a garnish that when you put it in the drink it changes the colour.
Presentation: Funky glassware is difficult for many bars to achieve because, well, people love stealing glasses and not everyone has the budget of the American Bar at the Savoy. But something you can do is focus on how the drink is presented at the table. Serving boards like this if you're in the UK or like this if you’re in the USA are cheap but work great. Garnish on one side, drink on the other.
#2 Nostalgia
Nostalgia is something that really started taking off in 2021 and has continued to grow.
Nostalgia helps people feel comfortable. It’s not about how healthy a drink is, how bad for the environment it is, or how many units you should specifically be having. It’s about relaxing, letting go and focusing on a good tasting drink. Which is what everyone wants when ordering a cocktail.
So going forward throughout 2023 and in my prediction, beyond 2023. We can expect to see more and more nostalgia inducing cocktails. Think, retro ingredients and names.
A few ideas for nostalgic cocktails are as follows;
It's all in the name: Name your cocktail after an old movie or icon for an instant nostalgic feeling without having to mess with the serve or ingredients. Think ‘The Goonie’ or ‘The Hepburn’ if you pair up the ingredients, you could also fit in a pun. Everyone loves a pun, anyone for a ‘Honey, I Shrunk The Figs’?
Bring back the Retro serves: Put a twist on a classic or just bring it back in its complete form. And when I say ‘retro’. I don’t mean Sazeracs or Vieux Carrés. I mean the cocktails you had in your college days which were deemed too sugary and lacking any creativity. Because that’s what we’re eager for. Think; Blue Lagoons, Sex on the beach, Mudslides and White Russians.
#3 Higher Education
Throughout lockdown, a lot of people took to learning how to make cocktails themselves. Which meant post lockdown, bartenders had to up their game because the consumer knew way more than they did before.
No more could you get away with charging £10 for an Espresso Martini or bullsh*ting a customer with cocktail knowledge you made up on the spot to sound like you know what you’re talking about.
Yes, it was invented when a super model asked Dick Bradsel for a cocktail that would “wake her up and fuck her up” but no, let me stop you there, I heard the Kate Moss thing was only a guess so that’s not quite true, is it?..
The point I’m making is that a little bit of knowledge got you a long way in the bar industry. But not so much now. Customers want more knowledge, they want more interesting cocktails, they want to know that if they're spending their money, they’re doing so on something that tastes delicious and they can’t get from anywhere else.
And for people NOT in the bar industry, the consumers, they’re continuing to grow their own knowledge. Lockdown might be long over but your regular 9-5 office worker is still whipping up cocktails of their own on the weekend.
Christmas last month saw more cocktails being served as part of the meal than ever before. Normally it's just wine, sherry, and port. Now people are branching out.
All this means that people are on the search for higher tier, informative sources for knowledge.
Lucky for you, you get a lot of that here on this website. And speaking of education. I spent the majority of last year teamed up with a premium course creator to create the ultimate cocktail learning course named Cocktails From Scratch. It’s 3 hours of studio quality on-demand video with 11 downloadable assets including my very own flavour guide and over 50 cocktail recipes.
The course is not me showing you how to make cocktails which you could just google. The course is me teaching you how to create original cocktails from scratch. It’s the formulas and creative process of coming up with something totally unique.
I also went through it in a specific way where if you’re a professional bartender or a beginner, you can comfortably go through the course and learn something.
Check it out here to learn more > Cocktails From Scratch - The Course
It’s currently 50% off so act fast and all that. Oh, and if you want to see the trailer, you can do so below.
#4 Batched
Batching is another trend set to run the bars this year and let me tell you. It fills me with delight.
Batching has always been a topic of debate with bartenders. Some think it takes away part of the showmanship, or that it's lazy. Others (like myself) disagree.
Bartenders are leaving the industry, new bartenders are joining the industry, old bartenders are coming back, there's a lot to keep on top of with bars. Consistency has been slipping. With batching, you can assure that whether you have a new starter or veteran of the bar, everyone is getting the same drink.
Consistent through and through.
It also saves a lot of time on the serve which means you can put extra time into things like presentation of the drink. Less time making the cocktail = more time for showmanship.
Which I guess is the biggie when it comes to batching. The naysayers believe that customers want to see you mixing and measuring ingredients as opposed to just pouring out a pre batched bottle. But I disagree, I don’t think they do care. I think they care more about you engaging with them, chatting to them, and building that rapport.
Finally, and the ultimate benefit to pre-batching is that you have the time to develop more interesting cocktails. Some cocktails just don’t work, some cocktails work better fresh and there's no way around that. But if you want a cocktail on your menu that's milk washed, or aged, or has about 20 different ingredients in it. Then the only way to go about it is to pre batch.
I always say that if a cocktail has more than 3 ingredients then it's being pre batched. And if it relies on fresh ingredients, then you better bet I’m pre batching everything other then that fresh ingredient.
#5 Premium drinking
With people expecting better cocktails, more showmanship and theatre in the bar. It means more people are expecting premium ingredients that they can’t get at home.
On top of this. The younger generation are not drinking as much as generations before them. So when they do drink, they want to drink something that makes them feel luxurious. They’d much rather spend 20 quid on one bottle of wine to have on the weekend then 20 quid on 4 bottles of wine to have over the entire week.
People aren't pushing it to the extreme like they used to, less and less are people getting blackout drunk at some rave in a field somewhere. People are wanting to sit down, sip slowly, and have a conversation. The younger generation really are getting civilized aren't they?
This also falls into the rise of social media. Unfortunately a bottle of £10 Smirnoff vodka just doesn’t look good in a picture, but waving about that bottle Don Julio 1942 as a certain Je ne sais quoi about it.
Just note that if you’re buying into this. A lot (and I mean a lot) of brands are bottling up cheaper liquid in expensive bottles to raise the price and centre themselves as ‘luxury brands’.
Just because something is expensive does not mean its high quality. You might be getting ripped off into buying a glorified bottle. So proceed with caution.
#6 Luxury rum
Luxury rum - Image source.
As a continuation from the above trend. We have luxury rum. For the longest time, rum has been associated with cheap drinks and partying. Which doesn’t fit the trends of today. But rum has been going through a slow rebranding.
More and more we’re seeing rum treated like scotch. It’s being aged, sipped straight, and collected.
People are investing more into expensive bottles of rum and brands are focusing less on their base level ranges, and more on their premium ranges. We’re seeing more rums with age statements than ever before.
And for those people who are mixing rum. We see it less mixed with sugary drinks like coke and fruit juice, and more with the likes of soda and tonic water. Honestly, I predict this will be the year of rum and tonic.
Furthermore, because of this shift, we’re seeing more innovation in the rum category than ever before. A lot of rums have even taken a botanical route similar to gin, which I guess is why rum and tonic is taking off.
Personally I can not wait to see what innovation the rum category brings this year.
#7 Non Alcoholic
What a shocker, I'm going to talk about the non alcoholic category. Non alcoholic, mindful drinking, and low alcohol is something I mentioned with last year's predictions, the years prior and the years prior to that.
Despite people saying its had its time, it’s still growing like crazy. More and more people are choosing not to drink or to drink less. What I will say for this year which I haven't for years prior is that we’re now seeing more drinkers picking up non alcoholic drinks.
These are people with no intention of going sober but still want to try non alcoholic drinks, people drinking non alcoholic cocktails for breakfast or swapping to non alcoholic drinks for the last portion of there nights out to not feel so rough in the morning.
We’re also seeing movement in the non alcoholic bar category. Cocktail bars that don’t serve alcohol. Last year there were a lot of pop ups and supper clubs based around non alcoholic drinking which performed very successfully. So, could this be the year we see more permanent instalments of these ideas?
I’ve spoken about this a lot so I’ll save you the time. I mean, I am the mindful mixologist after all.
But for resources on this check out the below articles;
#8 Food pairings
Wine and food has always been a popular pairing. People pick certain wines to pair with what they're eating or vice versa, but this year, I predict that with the slowing down on drinking and the premium drinking category becoming more popular, that so too will food pairings with these drinks.
Cocktails paired with desserts, sipping spirits paired with antipasti’s, even beer and food pairings are something I'm seeing more and more off.
#9 Tiktoktails
Finally we have the rise of TikTok cocktails or as I like to call them… Tiktoktails.
Bartenders hate this one. It’s kinda funny really. People coming into bars and asking “can you make this cocktail I saw on tiktok” flashing a 20 second cocktail video to the bartender.
It infuriates them.
Reminds me of the Pornstar Martini phase when bartenders hated making them just because they were tired of being asked.
The fact is, TikTok is huge and has the potential to influence the drinking culture. Last year we saw a massive breakout in people wanting Negroni Sbagliatos. It went from a very unpopular drink to almost everyone ever knowing what it was.
Suddenly it popped up on every bartender's social media and every bar's menu. And why? Because of a less than 30 second video on tiktok of someone saying they liked them.
Cocktails that trend on tiktok, trend in the real world. So going forward this year, tiktok will be the place to see what's popular and what's not popular in the world of drinks. And the popular creators making drinks on tiktok, they have the power to influence the category as a whole.
And hey, whilst I'm on the subject, I’ve created a cocktail tiktok of my own which you can check out here. Don’t think I'll be influencing the category anytime soon but you never know!
Conclusion
And that concludes my cocktail and drink trend predictions for 2023. Bit later than usual but hey, what can I say? I was busy on TikTok…
Thanks for stopping by and do feel free to comment below with any predictions you have that weren’t on this list and we can discuss them together. Don't forget to drink high quality spirits, plenty of water, and to check out that course of mine.
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Hi, I’m Cameron, guv’nor of Smartblend and author of this article. If you liked this then you’re in luck, I have a bunch drink techniques here. Oh, and don’t forget to sign up below to receive the Smartblend monthly newsletter!
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