Editorial
Los Angeles has quietly become one of the best cities in the world for mezcal. The combination of a massive Mexican-American community, an adventurous drinking culture, and bartenders who actually visit Oaxacan distilleries has produced a scene that puts most other cities to shame. These are the best mezcal bars in Los Angeles — the ones worth your time, your palate, and your Uber fare home.
LA's mezcal culture has moved well beyond tourist-facing margarita menus. The bars on this list carry serious agave programmes — espadín alongside tobalá, tepextate, and madrecuixe — with bartenders who can actually tell you where the maguey was grown and who made it. This is LA drinking at its best.
The serious agave drinker knows that espadín is just the beginning. These next picks are where you go when you're ready to graduate to the more obscure varietals — the wild-harvested tobalá, the slow-growing tepextate, the smoky madrecuixe. These bars know exactly what they're stocking and why.
Not every mezcal drinker wants to sip neat. These bars have invested in cocktail programmes that treat mezcal as a genuine base spirit rather than a novelty — using it with the same care a great whisky bar might apply to bourbon.
The best mezcal bars in Los Angeles have earned their reputation honestly. This is a city where the community is close to the source — Oaxaca is two hours by plane, and the cultural connection runs deep. If you're visiting and want to understand the range of what agave spirits can be, start with Agave Moderno for the education, then take yourself to El Copal or Mezcalería Humo for the experience of just drinking something brilliant in a room full of people who feel the same way.
Book the flights and the tasting menus in advance. The neat pours, happily, are walk-in only.
Agave spirits don't stop at mezcal. If tequila is also on your radar, our guide to the best bars for tequila lovers worldwide covers the dedicated agave programmes in NYC, Chicago, and Austin alongside LA's finest.
Marcus covers the LA and Miami drinking scenes for barsforKings. He has been following the agave spirits revolution since 2015 and visits Oaxaca most years. He has a strong view on which Silver Lake bars are worth the wait and which ones are just Instagram.