The Margarita has held on to second place on Drinks International's 2026 Cocktail Report, the trade title's annual survey of which classic cocktails sell most at the world's best bars, while further down the same table the Mojito climbed three places to twelfth and the Amaretto Sour moved up two places into eleventh, both re-entering ground they had lost in previous years.
The report, published in April, put the Negroni top for a fifth consecutive year and the Espresso Martini fifth, findings already well covered elsewhere. Less noticed is the movement in the rest of the fifty, which this year was unusually volatile. The Vesper jumped from forty eighth to thirtieth, the Mai Tai climbed nineteen places to twenty fourth, and the Pornstar Martini fell fifteen places to twenty sixth. Drinks International's own commentary called the Pornstar Martini's slide a genuine dive rather than statistical noise.
That last point is worth putting in context rather than leaving to sit awkwardly next to the Margarita's steadiness. Drinks International surveys the cocktail menus and sales of the world's most awarded and internationally minded bars, a small, self-selecting set chasing the next interesting pour. CGA's UK on-trade tracking, which covers ordinary pubs, bars and restaurants across the country, has for years put the Pornstar Martini at the top of the average British round. Both can be true at once. A drink can lose ground with the bartenders chasing novelty while still winning the vote of everyone else, and the gap between those two pictures says more about who is doing the ordering than about the drink itself.
The Margarita's staying power owes something to its age and its simplicity. The most repeated origin story places it in Mexico in the late 1930s, though as with most classic cocktails the exact inventor is disputed, with Tijuana bartender Carlos "Danny" Herrera, Dallas hostess Margarita Sames and a Ciudad Juárez claimant all credited in different tellings. Whichever version is true, the drink that emerged, tequila, orange liqueur and fresh lime in careful balance, has changed remarkably little since. Three ingredients, no cooking, no ageing, nothing to go wrong if the ratios are right, which is precisely the formula that has kept the Negroni and the Old Fashioned near the top of the same list for years.
The Amaretto Sour's climb points to something else, a slower rehabilitation of the wider sour family after a period when the style was seen as old fashioned rather than an Old Fashioned. Bartenders spent much of the last decade steering drinkers towards spirit forward, low sugar serves, and the sour, built on amaretto, lemon and egg white, fell out of step with that. Its return to eleventh suggests the pendulum has swung back towards drinks that are simply pleasant to drink, a shift the Mojito's own climb tells the same story about, since a well made Mojito has never really gone out of fashion so much as gone in and out of critical favour.
David Baddeley, founder of Boozy, said: "We can a Margarita and a Dragonfruit Mojito, and between them they tell you most of what you need to know about why some cocktails last. The Margarita hasn't needed reinventing since the 1930s. The Mojito has spent the last decade being reinvented constantly, and this year's numbers suggest people are drifting back towards it, whichever version they're drinking."
Boozy's own Margarita follows the classic formula, tequila, orange liqueur and fresh lime, at 12 per cent ABV, with the full home method on the Margarita recipe page. Its take on the Mojito's rise is the Dragonfruit Mojito, white rum, lime and mint with a dragonfruit and mango twist at 8.4 per cent ABV, with its own method on the Dragonfruit Mojito recipe page. Anyone wanting to check how either compares to a bar-made version in strength can run the numbers through the Cocktail ABV Calculator, which covers more than 100 recipes and adjusts for serving size.
Boozy asks everyone to drink responsibly. Guidance on units, weekly limits and lower risk drinking is available at drinkaware.co.uk.
