The Best Cocktail Bars in Vienna

Adolf Loos designed this bar in 1908 and it has not changed since. The room is exactly 3.5 metres wide, lined with mirrors that make it feel infinite, and it fits about 12 people comfortably. The cocktail list is short, classical, and impeccably executed. Coming here is partly about the drinks and substantially about standing in one of the most perfect small rooms in Europe. Book ahead — there are almost no walk-in spots.

Order: The Dry Martini — six-to-one ratio, stirred, served in a cold coupe

The most interesting cocktail programme in the first district, run by a bar team that makes almost all their own modifiers in-house — vermouths, amari, tinctures, and shrubs using Austrian botanicals. The resulting menu reads like a botany textbook but tastes far better. The elderflower and pine needle Martini is the best cocktail currently being served in Vienna. Open from 6pm, closed Sunday and Monday.

Order: The elderflower and pine needle Martini — house-made vermouth, Austrian gin

Behind an unmarked door on a quiet first district street, Tür 7 is Vienna's best-known semi-secret bar. The room holds 20 people and the menu is a single laminated card with eight cocktails. Every drink is seasonal, every ingredient is sourced from small Austrian producers, and the bar team changes the entire menu every three months. The cocktail knowledge here is exceptional — ask questions and you will learn things.

Order: Whatever is the bartender's current favourite — they will tell you and they will be right

Part wine bar, part cocktail destination, entirely necessary. The wine list covers Austrian and Central European natural producers with a depth that exceeds most dedicated wine bars in the city. The cocktail side of the menu uses the same producers — grape spirit cocktails, wine-based sours, vermouth and tonic variations — in ways that make the two programmes genuinely complementary rather than competing.

Order: The Grüner Veltliner Spritz Variation — house-made citrus and herbal modifiers

Attached to one of Vienna's best independent cinemas, Schikaneder is the bar that the city's creative and film industries have been using as their local for 20 years. The cocktail menu is unpretentious and well-made, prices are reasonable by Vienna standards, and the crowd is the most interesting in the city after midnight. Open until 4am on weekends — a rare thing in a city that generally closes early.

Order: The house Aperol variation — they add a house-made bitter that improves the original significantly

A converted Gasthaus that operates as a serious cocktail bar in the evenings while maintaining the neighbourhood feel of the original. The bar team uses traditional Austrian schnapps and distillates — Williams pear, apricot, sloe — as the base for modern cocktail recipes with good results. The resulting menu is genuinely Viennese in character and unlike anything you will find in the tourist-facing bars of the first district.

Order: The Williams pear and lemon thyme Sour — one of the most characterful cocktails in the city

The Red Bar at the Sacher is one of the most recognisable rooms in Vienna — deep red walls, antique furniture, a bar team in formal dress. The cocktail menu covers classics with the precision you expect from a hotel of this calibre, alongside a substantial Austrian wine list. Expensive, yes. But the setting alone justifies the price for one drink, especially if you arrive in the late afternoon before the evening crowd.

Order: The Vienna Sling — house-made cherry liqueur and Austrian gin, developed exclusively for the Sacher

A small bar in the second district that has become one of the most respected drinks programmes in Vienna among the city's bar professionals. The menu is short — twelve cocktails — and changes completely every eight weeks. The focus on Central European spirits and local producers is consistent across every iteration. Letz Bar is the kind of place that improves every time you visit because the menu has moved on.

Order: The current seasonal stirred cocktail — ask for details on whatever spirit they are exploring that season

Opposite the Vienna State Opera, Vis-à-vis has been the pre-curtain and post-concert bar of choice for the opera crowd since 1960. The champagne list is deep, the classic cocktails are well-executed, and the people-watching during interval on a performance night is as good as the drinks. Slightly formal, entirely correct, and one of those bars that feels utterly European in a way that is hard to describe but immediately recognisable.

Order: The Champagne Cocktail with house-made sugar cube and Angostura — a Vienna institution