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The Porn Star Martini was yet again our most viewed cocktail but I feel it should have been the Espresso Martini. I suspect that the number of variations we have for this cocktail divided its page views to keep the Porn Star in pole position. [Forgive the pun!]

Viewing the stats by continent and individual countries also reveals different preferences, for example in the Americas the Cantaritos is by far the most viewed cocktail, Australians the Fluffy Duck while sadly many us Brits seem to prefer a Cheek Vimto.

Our "World's Top 100 Cocktails" (click the tabbed pages to view, 1-20, 21-40, 41-60, 61-80, 81-100) are generated by accessing the page view analytics from the truly international traffic to Difford's Guide.

Covid and the resulting Lockdowns around the world inevitably affected folks' online preferences and with increased time at home led many to become home cocktail enthusiasts. As a result, our traffic surged to over 1.3 million monthly users viewing over 4.4 million pages a month. Happily, post-Covid home cocktail-making continues to thrive so taking our traffic back to Lockdown highs. On New Year's Eve we had 108,035 users viewing 301,141 pages – our biggest day ever.

The New Year is when folk like me write pieces such as this, looking back over the past year. It's also when we look forward and make predictions. Last year, after seven years as our most viewed cocktail, I predicted that Porn Star's popularity would wane in 2022. Instead, it stayed on top for an eighth year. So instead of looking forward, I'm looking back to a listicle in the brilliantly named 1936 Burke's Complete Cocktail and Tastybite Recipe book along with the most popular cocktails in 1934 according to Esquire. [Or see the top 20 cocktails from 2022.]

Ten Best Cocktails of 1934 by Frank Shay, Esquire 1934

1. The Old-Fashioned
2. The Dry Martini
3. Ward Eight
4. The Vodka Cocktail
5. Vermouth Cassis
6. Champagne Cocktail
7. Planters' Punch
8. The Old-Fashioned Dutch
9. Harvest Moon
10. The Daiquiri

A cocktail if it is to be of any value must have the quality of revivifying the drinker; it must lift him out of the doldrums of the workaday world and give him rosy visions of himself and his fellow-man. He must be, for a short time, the man he thinks he is and after two of the foregoing, three if he is a hard case, he should be able to say: 'Here I come, head up, tail over the dashboard and all pores open.'
As we finish the first year of the Newer Freedom the ten cocktails listed and enumerated above hold the leading positions. They won their places on sheer merit and it will be well worth our while to watch them and see how they fare during the second year.
It would be difficult to close this piece telling of the good drinks without saying a word for those 'pansies'[*see below] that are now gone and well-forgotten. Even a list of the worst ten has a charm not unlike a file of the old Police Gazette. We might, in our day of victory, offer them an In Memoriam - with a Raspberry:
The Bronx
The Alexander
The Pousse Cafe
The Sweetheart
The Orange Blossom
The Pink Lady
The Clover Club
The Fluffy Ruffles
The Pom Pom
The Cream Fizz.
Requiescat in pace!

Frank Shay, 1934

Burke's 1936 most popular cocktails

1. Martini cocktail (Dry or Sweet)
2. Manhattan Cocktail (Dry or Sweet)
3. Bronx Cocktail (Dry or Sweet)
4. Old Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail (Sweet)
5. Sidecar Cocktail (Sweet)
6. Clover Club Cocktail (Dry)
7. Gin Rickey (Dry)
8. Gin Fizz (Sweet of Dry)
9. Bacardi Cocktail (Dry)
10. Alexander Cocktail No.1 (Sweet)
11. Rock and Rye (Sweet)
12. Whiskey Cocktail (Dry)
13. Sherry Cocktail (Sweet or Dry)
14. Dubonnet Cocktail (Sweet)
15. Champagne Cocktail (Sweet)

*[The word "pansies" is referring to the short-lived perennial plant so indicating that these cocktails were short-lived.]