World's Best Bars: The Nominees For The 2025 Spirited Awards
There ought to be a few of drinks on the house tonight at the best bars in the world as the Tales of the Cocktail Foundation announced its nominees for the 2025 Spirited Awards.
Launched in 2007 and considered to be among the hospitality industry's highest honors, the Spirited Awards are part of the annual Tales of the Cocktail festival held in New Orleans in July, honoring the top bars, bartenders, brand ambassadors, and spirits journalists from around the world. The awards are selected by a jury of hospitality peers—acclaimed bartenders, bar owners, and journalists and authors. (Forbes is the official media partner of the Spirited Awards.)
Once again, there are many familiar watering holes among this year's nominees. Hong Kong's Bar Leone (named Best New International Cocktail Bar at the 2024 Spirited Awards) built on its early success and received three nominations: Best International Bartender, Best Bar Team and Best International Cocktail Bar. And Mexico City's Handshake Speakeasy, which won Best International Bar Team in 2024 and whose cofounder, Eric Van Beek, was named International Bartender of the Year last year, was also nominated for Best International Cocktail Bar.
In the United States, Denver's Yacht Club, which was named Best U.S. Cocktail Bar last year, received a nomination for Best U.S. Bar Team and McClain Hedges picked up a nomination for U.S. Bartender of the Year. And Allegory, at Washington, D.C.'s Eaton Hotel, which was named Best U.S. Hotel Bar last year and is home to 2024's U.S. Bartender of the Year, Kapri Robinson, was also nominated for Best U.S. Bar Team.
New York continued to flex its cocktail muscle. Three of the four nominees for Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar can be found in Manhattan: Bar Snack, Clemente Bar and Sip & Guzzle. (The fourth nominee, ViceVersa, is in Miami). And Overstory, in the Financial District, was nominated again for Best U.S. Cocktail Bar. For those who want an atlas of nominees, Tales of the Cocktail built an interactive map of the world's best bars in 2021.
Most nominees will have to wait until July 24 to learn if they actually won a Spirited Award, but there are at least two bars (The Bar at Keens Steakhouse in New York and Madrid's Bar Cock) and two bartenders (Lynette Marrero and Ian Burrell), who can raise a glass in celebration tonight. Both Keens and Bar Cock will be celebrated as Timeless bars for their decades of innovation and service.
Burrell, who began his career as a bartender in London in the 1990s, reinvented himself as a 'global rum ambassador' some 20 years ago, will be presented with the Helen David Lifetime Achievement Award at the Spirited Awards. The charismatic Burrell has represented many different rum brands over the years—and cofounded Equiano rum in 2020—and is renowned in the industry for a presentation style he calls 'edutainment.'
Marrero, meanwhile, is a veteran New York bartender who was named Best Bar Mentor at the 2019 Spirited Awards, and will be honored with the Tales Visionary Award. In addition to cofounding Speed Rack, an international bartending competition for women, she is the mixologist behind Delola, Jennifer Lopez' line of bottled cocktails.
2025 Spirited Awards Nominees
New York's Overstory is nominated again for Best U.S. Cocktail Bar.
Hong Kong's Bar Leone is nominated for Best International Cocktail Bar
Harry N. Abrams
Veteran rum ambassador Ian Burrell will be awarded the Helen Lawrenson Lifetime Achievement Award.
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