Drinks International has released its Annual Brand Report for 2022, and Australia features twice in the top ten list of trending gin brands worldwide. 

The two local brands that made the cut were Four Pillars Gin and Never Never Distilling Co.

Four Pillars said: “We’re feeling super proud this week. This is a great list of brands, voted for by the best bartenders around the world. Here’s to another year of taking Australian gin, flavour and love of great drinks to the world.”

It’s been a year filled with accolades for the brands. Late last year, both Four Pillars and Never Never were both shortlisted in the International Gin Producer of the Year category at the IWSC Awards. Never Never also won Champion Australian Distiller for the second year in a row at the Australian Distilled Spirits Awards in December. 

Now in its 13th year, the Drinks International Annual Brand Report is a snapshot of the buying habits of the world’s best bars. Predicated on a global survey of a 100-strong sample of the world’s best bars – those that have been nominated or won international awards – it offers insight into the drinks brands used at the elite end of the bar trade.

Hamish Smith, editor of the Brands Report, said: “If 2021 wasn’t the recovery year we’d hoped for, it was a marked improvement on 2020. In the majority of major markets, we saw the lockdown of bars as a last, rather than first resort, and other restrictions – curfews, alcohol restrictions and distancing – became less and less defining interventions as the year grew old. It wasn’t uninterrupted trading by any stretch, but bars were doing business in most markets in 2021, most of the time.

“The question this report seeks to answer, is how bars’ – and by corollary consumers’ – buying decisions changed? If our report is anything to go by, social and economic volatility has created no revolution among bar brands;  those that pass through the pages of the Brands Report 2021 are in the most part, much the same as they were in peace time. But around the edges and in the details, there has been an evolution, with gains and losses across all our lists.”

Two new riffs on Four Pillars Rare Dry Gin