Hamish Smith talks bar awards, lists, and the future of drinks journalism

The Gresham’s Greenhorn Cocktail Competition is going national thanks to Buffalo Trace. To celebrate 10 years of the competition and The Gresham, Buffalo Trace is sending The Gresham team from Brisbane to host the competition in every capital city. The Gresham’s Greenhorn cocktail competition gives bartenders who are new to cocktail comps a chance to shine, with some great prizes on offer ‚ including the title of Australian’s Best Emerging Bartender. To enter, you must have no more than three years’ experience bartending in a cocktail bar, and not have competed in any major national cocktail competition finals. All you have to do is create a unique recipe using Buffalo Trace — visit thegresham.com.au/greenhorn for the full rules and to enter. Entries close at midnight AEST on Tuesday August 22nd — so get cracking now.

It’s awards season for the bar industry. Last month, the Spirited Awards were held at Tales of the Cocktail — it’s a star-studded affair, held at The Fillmore in New Orleans, with huge screens, champagne and cocktails flowing, a live stream of everything, and a teleprompter and green room for those people presenting awards (of whom I was one — I was very pleased to present a couple of awards on the night). It’s a big deal with some of the world’s best bartenders and operators in town for the night.

One of those people who flew in just for a couple of nights — his magazine was up for Best Cocktail & Spirits Publication at the Spirited Awards — was my guest on this week’s episode of Drinks At Work, Hamish Smith.

Hamish is the editor of CLASS Magazine in the UK, the bars editor for Drinks International, and an academy chair for The World’s 50 Best Bars. He’s also the creator and organiser behind Drinks International’s Bar World 100 list — so he knows a thing or two about bar awards and lists.

And that forms a large part of our chat this episode. I ask Hamish about whether these lists are good for the industry, we talk about how sometimes the lists and awards can produce strange behaviour from operators wanting to get their bars on there — we talk about the benefits, the drawbacks, and a lot more on that topic.

But Hamish also shares his thoughts on the future of drinks journalism, a topic in which I obviously have some interest; we talk about how he writes bar reviews, and what it takes to open a bar in London these days.

It’s a really great chat, and he’s a smart, thoughtful guy. I’ve got a few takeaway quotes from the interview below, but do give the full episode a listen — you can listen to the episode here, in the Apple Podcasts app, on Spotify, or your podcast player of preference.

The Quotable Hamish Smith

“Print magazines are probably not the future.”
Hamish is the editor of CLASS, a print magazine that was created by Simon Difford in the late 1990s. Difford sold CLASS in 2001, and its subsequent owners closed it down. It was resurrected in 2009 — with Difford publishing it under licence — before again being shut down in 2014. It was resurrected once more in 2016 by Agile Media, with Hamish in place as the bars editor — and its influence has maybe never been greater. But Hamish can see that digital is the future of drinks journalism, even if — as he says on the episode — that there will still be a role for print in the future. “They’re a smaller part of the future,” he says. “People like the feel of them, they’re tactile — they feel in some way more important when something is printed on paper in a magazine, it just carries a bit more weight.”

“I don’t want to be scared to say something that’s negative. That’s not the real world. I just don’t believe in the version of trade media that’s cheerleading, all about celebrating and promoting — I’ve never believed that’s my role.”
One of the things I‘ve admired about CLASS magazine — which is a trade publication, not aimed at the broader public — is that they publish regular bar reviews, with genuine criticism in there. You may or may not agree with the conclusions they come to, but I think it's an interesting thing for a trade piublication to do, and I haven't seen it elsewhere. It's intreresting, too, because from the recent Boothby reader survey I conducted, bar reviews were one thing 75% of you wanted to see more often on Boothby. So stay tuned.

“We have our awards — that’s where we do our celebrating.”
Hamish likes to think of the journalism aspect of CLASS magazine — the interviews, reviews, opinions pieces etc. — as distinct and separate from the CLASS Bar Awards and lists like the Bar World 100, because the two streams fulfil two different aims. The awards are where they champion the industry; the journalism, that’s where they try to avoid simple cheerleading.

“They’re not seen to be people who are overly commercial, they don’t chase the dollar.”
As the creator of Drinks International’s Bar World 100, Hamish says that the people on the list tend to champion causes that are bigger than their bar or their brand, and have some integrity when it comes to the brands they work with. I couldn’t agree more. (But take that with a grain of salt — I was happy to score the 90th spot on the Bar World 100 this year.)

“We’re seeing indies open up outside of London. Manchester and Birmingham are good examples of really flourishing cocktail scenes right now. It’s just high risk going into London.”
I imagine it has never been that easy to open a bar in London, but Hamish says it has never been more difficult. It’s expensive to do, and there’s more competition there than just about anywhere. That’s why they’re seeing bartenders, who have made a name for themselves working in London’s best bars and abroad, are returning to their home cities outside of London to open their first bars — he cites the Schofield brothers in Manchester as one such example. That doesn’t mean London doesn’t have its upsides — if you succeed there, you’ve got it made. But, as Hamish says, “if you’re gonna have a failure, don’t have it in London.”

And don't forget — entries into The Gresham’s Greenhorn Cocktail Competition thanks to Buffalo Trace are open now. The Gresham’s Greenhorn cocktail competition gives bartenders who are new to cocktail comps a chance to shine, with some great prizes on offer ‚ including the title of Australian’s Best Emerging Bartender. To enter, you must have no more than three years’ experience bartending in a cocktail bar, and not have competed in any major national cocktail competition finals. All you have to do is create a unique recipe using Buffalo Trace — visit thegresham.com.au/the-greenhorn for the full rules and to enter. Entries close at midnight AEST on Tuesday August 22nd — so get cracking now.