Bar Trends 2025: What Serious Drinkers Will Be Ordering

This Crown Heights bar has been doing the agave expansion properly since it opened — treating mezcal, sotol, and raicilla with the same educational rigour that whisky bars apply to single malts. The bar notes on each agave spirit explain production method, region, and producer. The cocktails are built around the spirit's character rather than using it as a backdrop for sour templates. The neighbourhood is still undervisited by the cocktail press, which makes it better to drink in.

Order: Ask for their raicilla introduction — the bartender will walk you through it properly

Ivy Mix and Julie Reiner's Cobble Hill bar has the deepest agave spirits selection in New York outside a dedicated mezcal bar. Their menu places each cocktail within a specific agave tradition — this drink uses Oaxacan mezcal, that one features Jalisco raicilla — in a way that educates without patronising. The seasonal cocktail menu typically includes three to four agave-forward drinks that demonstrate different expressions of the category.

Order: The house margarita as a baseline, then one of the mezcal-based cocktails from the seasonal section

The bar program at Sunday in Brooklyn operates on a simple principle: every guest receives the same quality of attention regardless of how sophisticated their drink order is. The bartenders are trained to read the table and pitch their interaction accordingly — extensive spirits conversation for those who want it, cheerful efficiency for those who do not. The cocktails are excellent and secondary to the experience of feeling genuinely welcomed. This is the 2025 bar model.

Order: Tell them what you feel like broadly — the bartenders here are trained to work with any brief

Threes Brewing's Gowanus taproom has added a cocktail menu that uses house-brewed beers as cocktail ingredients rather than as alternatives to cocktails. Wort-washed spirits, beer-based syrups, and cocktails built around specific hop profiles demonstrate what happens when a serious brewer and a serious bartender work on the same project. The approach is rare enough that the results are worth the trip to Gowanus specifically.

Order: The cocktail that features their current seasonal beer as an ingredient — it changes and it is always interesting

This Peckham shop-bar hybrid treats craft beer and natural wine with identical editorial rigour — the staff know the producers, the growing conditions, the fermentation approach. What is interesting in 2025 is how their thinking about natural wine fermentation has begun to influence how the bar talks about craft beer. The crossover language — terroir, producer philosophy, fermentation character — is exactly how the best bars will discuss beer in the next generation.

Order: Ask for a craft beer and a natural wine they think pair well — the answer tells you everything about the bar's knowledge

A six-seat counter bar in Osaka's Namba district that has developed an international following among whisky drinkers who make the trip specifically to drink there. The owner sources single casks directly from distilleries, holds back expressions for regular customers, and maintains a level of whisky knowledge that challenges even the most experienced drinkers. No reservation system — arrive early and wait. Worth it without qualification.

Order: Ask what Japanese whisky casks have arrived recently — this is the whole point of visiting

The Paris bar scene has been undergoing a transformation since 2019, and Pharmácie Générale is among its most discussed recent additions. Housed in a converted pharmacy in the 11th, the cocktail menu uses botanical ingredients sourced from specific French producers with the kind of menu annotation previously seen only in the best natural wine bars. International cocktail drinkers are now including it on Paris itineraries alongside the city's established institutions.

Order: Their house Vermouth Tonic — the vermouth is made in-house and nothing in Paris tastes quite like it