Earlier this week in Madrid, the World’s 50 Best Bars list was announced, with three excellent Australian bars, Sydney’s Maybe Sammy and Melbourne’s Caretaker’s Cottage and Byrdi each earning a coveted spot.

But what does that mean? Who decides these things, and why do these venues, in particular, qualify when there are so many great bars to choose from?

To decipher such lists, context is important. Firstly, World’s 50 Best, which also hosts the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards, is a for-profit business, a division of UK-based data and events company William Reed.

This is not the Nobel Foundation, tirelessly seeking the world’s most brilliant minds for purely philanthropic reasons. The primary goal of World’s 50 Best is to sell sponsorship. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – these awards offer much-needed publicity to the hospitality industry and recognise the work of dedicated professionals – but it does change the lens through which these lists should be viewed.

Secondly, no group of people can visit every bar or restaurant in the world, which means there are all sorts of biases built into the system. As many have pointed out, there’s a tendency to favour North America and Western Europe. Things are improving, but much more diversification is needed, and there’s a lot of cultural bias yet to unlearn. William Reed has a lovely-looking “diversity, equity and inclusion” section on its website, but its leadership team is 100 per cent white.

Thirdly, countries off the beaten track are at a distinct disadvantage. It’s a stipulation that panellists must have visited the bars they vote for within the past 18 months. So while the World’s 50 Best aims to recruit diverse and well-travelled panellists from around the world, those voters are far more likely to visit hospitality hubs such as New York, Paris and Singapore than they are to see the bars of Bolivia or Borneo.

For bigger and wealthier cities, it’s easier to tip the scales. I was recently in Hong Kong for the awards night for Asia’s 50 Best Bars, a trip paid for by the Hong Kong Tourism Board. I have now visited many of the best bars in the city on the HK taxpayer’s dime, and should I be called upon to vote for the World’s 50 Best Bars, I can name them with confidence.

“Many bars on the 50 Best list are affiliated with multinational luxury hotel chains or hospitality empires with huge marketing budgets.”

It’s the main reason Tourism Australia paid a lot of money for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants ceremony to be hosted in Melbourne in 2017. But I’m still waiting for Tourism Bolivia to call – I can’t vote for a bar I’ve never visited.

Those of us who have the luxury of travel often have limited time. We want to visit the bars that have won big awards to kick the tyres, and don’t always have time to discover new things for ourselves. On the other hand, there’s also an aspect of “shiny and new” that draws votes to recently opened venues.

Bar Leone debuted at number 1 on the Asia’s 50 Best Bars list this year after being open for less than a year, and is now placed second on the global list. Meanwhile, Dante in New York City was ranked number 1 in 2019 and has now dropped to 79. I doubt it’s any less good than it was five years ago.

The guest shift is another way many bars try to get ahead. This involves bartenders travelling to a different city to take over a local bar for an evening. More often than not, the primary purpose is to woo local panellists from the World’s 50 Best.

A spirits brand ambassador from Hong Kong, who travels around the region frequently, told me that the endless guest shifts were having a detrimental effect on the bar scene, especially in Singapore. “It used to be about being the best you could be and having fun,” they told me. “Now it’s just about doing as many guest shifts as possible and getting on the list. It’s become an obsession.”

Flying bartenders around the world to do guest shifts costs money, of course, which is the final and probably most important factor to consider. Many bars on the 50 Best list are affiliated with multinational luxury hotel chains or hospitality empires with huge marketing budgets, while others are small independent businesses. The playing field is not even.

Maybe Sammy is perhaps the first bar in Australia to lean into the World’s 50 Best playbook. Operated by a well-funded group of international bar professionals who have worked at previous top-ranking bars such as London’s Artesian, the bar has a gorgeous fitout, a serious marketing machine, and the kind of cocktails that play well in real life and on Instagram. It’s a concerted effort to win awards. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that Maybe Sammy offers some of the best hospitality in Australia, alongside the best martinis, in a room that makes you feel like a movie star.

The Caretaker’s Cottage approach is somewhat more organic, and very Melbourne. A small, independent business, it’s built its reputation from the ground up. Not that they don’t have advantages. The owners of Melbourne’s little-bar-that-could are well connected, having worked at some of the best bars in the world, including Fitzroy’s Black Pearl, which reached number 7 on the 50 Best list during their tenure.

But Caretaker’s also has a particular style of hospitality and ambience that’s engaging, professional and exciting. Classic enough to be timeless and modern enough to be cool, it’s the kind of bar you want to sit at. And unlike many entries on the list, it speaks loudly to the culture and character of its time and place: Melbourne 2024. This bar could be nowhere else.

Byrdi is another spot that speaks volumes about its specific location, but in this case letting the ingredients in the drinks do the talking. Most of what goes into the glass at Byrdi comes from within 100 kilometres of Melbourne, all of it seasonal and much of it foraged, fermented and otherwise fandangled by the dedicated team of bartenders/mad scientists under the watchful eye of Luke Whearty, perhaps the closest thing the bar world has to Noma’s Rene Redzepi.

At the end of the day, most people love awards when they get them, and have nothing but contempt for them when they don’t. The most important thing is to take these lists with a healthy salt rim for the flawed, subjective opinions they are.

We should be proud of any local bars that get a mention, and not lament too hard the ones that don’t. Go spend your hard-earned wherever you think it’s best deserved, and when travelling, ask a local for advice. For my money, I’ll be sitting at Caretaker’s Cottage, or any of the other 50 or so bars around Australia I think would rival anything on the World’s 50 Best list - objectivity not included.

Fred Siggins is a Melbourne-based freelance writer and co-owner of cocktail and American whiskey bar Goodwater. He’s been lucky enough to work at some award-winning bars, and some that have never won a thing.