Tales Spirited Awards 2026: World’s Best Cocktail Menu Nominees

Ranked #5 on North America's Best Bars 2025 and #51 globally, Sip & Guzzle on Cornelia Street is a two-floor collaboration between bartenders Steve Schneider and Shingo Gokan. The ground-floor Guzzle trades in highballs and lively tavern energy; the basement Sip slows the pace with Japanese-accented craft cocktails. Together they form one of New York's most architecturally thoughtful drinking experiences.

Paradiso entered Barcelona's cocktail scene through a refrigerator door in a pastrami shop and never stopped surprising. Named the World's Best Bar in 2022 and ranked in the World's 50 Best Bars every year since 2018, it operates in a carved-wood interior designed to disorient, then delight. The drinks programme, currently themed around 'The Mysteries of the Universe', treats each cocktail as a scientific proposition.

Inside Galerie Vivienne, one of Paris's 19th-century glass-roofed arcades, Danico operates as a bar that has earned a #49 ranking on the World's 50 Best Bars list in 2024. Accessed through the Italian restaurant Daroco, it runs a rotating cocktail programme drawing on global ingredients and advanced technique. The Xplorer series, now complete after five country-themed menus, has been replaced by a France-focused special edition.

Bar Us occupies a discreet first-floor space on Sukhumvit Soi 26, operating as a 'drinking room' where the menu follows a tasting structure — starters, mains, and afters, all built around liquid versions of Thai cuisine. Named in Tatler's Best Bars Asia-Pacific 2025 with the Best Innovation award, and ranked No. 4 on Asia's 50 Best Bars 2025, it is one of Bangkok's most recognised bars by international trade standards.

Ranked #4 in the World's 50 Best Bars 2024 and a consistent presence in the global top ten since 2020, Tayēr + Elementary operates as two distinct drinking experiences under one roof on Old Street. The Elementary front bar runs draught cocktails and weekly-changing menus; Tayēr behind it shifts to a daily produce-driven format built around hyper-seasonal ingredients. Six years in, it remains the bar others are measured against.

Allegory has held a position inside World's 50 Best North America's Best Bars since 2023, reaching as high as #24 in 2024. Located on K Street NW in downtown Washington, D.C., it operates with an explicit commitment to community representation, threading a narrative through its space and program that reflects the city it serves. A Google rating of 4.4 across 622 reviews tracks with its sustained critical standing.

Bar 1661 on Green Street is Dublin's foremost poitín bar, ranked among the Top 500 Bars in the world (#201, 2025) and widely credited with repositioning Ireland's native spirit as a serious cocktail ingredient. The programme goes deeper than novelty: poitín appears across the menu as a genuine technical foundation, placing this address at the centre of a broader conversation about Irish drinks identity.

<strong>Jigger & Pony</strong> sits <strong>in Singapore</strong>’s serious <strong>cocktail</strong> tier: a <strong>Tanjong Pagar bar</strong> with long-running Asia’s 50 <strong>Best Bars</strong> momentum, a 4.7 Google rating from 1,578 reviews, and an editorial-style drinks programme built around annual “menuzines.” The draw is not speakeasy concealment; it is polished hotel-lobby confidence, classic cocktail grammar, and a team comfortable turning technique into readable, social drinking.

Ranked #12 globally and #7 in Asia by World's 50 Best Bars in 2024, BKK Social Club operates from inside the Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok on the Chao Phraya River. Soaring arches, a mirrored back bar, and an al fresco terrace set the physical tone, while a Mexico-inspired menu built around mezcal, tepache, and horchata riffs delivers the substance behind the spectacle. Named to Tatler Best Bars Asia-Pacific 2025 and Top 500 Bars at #67, this is Bangkok's most consistently decorated destination bar.