The 47 Best Places to Drink and Do in Argentina

A winery in Las Compuertas where you can arrive by helicopter, which sets the tone. The Durigutti brothers focus on Malbec but also produce natural, organic, and rare cuvées that reward the detour. Cycling the vineyard rows and ending up at a gourmet picnic is a gentler option. The on-site guesthouse, Finca Victoria, has wooden-beamed ceilings and open fires. Ranked 11th on The World's 50 Best Vineyards list.

The winery is built in the shape of a cross, which sounds like an architectural boast until you learn the four wings actually feed wine by gravity into underground cellars beneath the Uco Valley floor. Tastings happen down there, around a two-tonne limestone table pulled from a nearby quarry, with oak barrels and compass roses carved into the stone for company. Salentein holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, and the Andes looming outside make the whole thing feel slightly unreal.

The Altura Máxima vineyard sits at over 3,000 metres, which means the vines are closer to the clouds than most commercial flights get above sea level. This remote Salta winery, a spot on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, is fully biodynamic, with an organic farm and orchards feeding the onsite restaurant. Guests choose from four tasting options and can stay at the boutique mountain ranch if descending feels like too much effort.

Named for the part of Vietnam that was once a French colony, CoChinChina is a cocktail bar in Palermo where the drinks come from Inés de los Santos, a name serious bar people say without needing to explain. The interior runs deep, with distinct rooms to discover and a hidden private room somewhere in the back. Food leans Franco-Vietnamese, bánh mì and all. Ranked 26th on the World's 50 Best Bars list, it draws the kind of crowd that knows exactly where it is going.

The wines age in an underground cellar called the Cava del Ángel, where Gregorian chants pipe through the walls on the theory that music helps them along. Whether or not that works, it sets the mood. Bodega Kaiken is a Mendoza winery and tasting experience, ranked on the World's 50 Best Vineyards, with vineyard walks, cellar tours, and Malbec pours framed by an unignorable view of the Andes. Francis Mallmann's open-fire restaurant is on site.

Paul Hobbs, one of the original Opus One winemaking team, built this glass and concrete winery in Luján de Cuyo to put Argentine Malbec on the global map, and it landed at #49 on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list. Small-group tours wind through the vineyards and underground cellar before settling into a curated tasting with food pairings. A second, more immersive experience runs up in the high-altitude Uco Valley, where the landscape does a lot of the convincing.

Buenos Aires' first listening bar hides a headphone-operated jukebox inside a Palermo Soho townhouse, where each guest can cue their own song without disturbing the room. The team behind Tres Monos fitted the space with wood paneling, leather seats, and mid-century modern lamps for a private-club feel loosely borrowed from 1960s Japanese audio bars. It ranks on the World's 50 Best Bars list.

Classical statues and ornamental fountains line the grounds of the Arizu family's historic Maipú estate, which Luigi Bosca has opened as a wine tourism destination. Guided tours move through some of the winery's oldest vines before landing at a tasting, and the neoclassical mansion makes the whole thing feel less like a winery visit and more like crashing a very elegant garden party where everyone is extremely focused on malbec.

Matías Michelini's biodynamic winery sits high in Gualtallary, close enough to the Andes snowline that you half-expect altitude sickness before the first pour. The visit starts in the soil, literally, with a farm walk through vegetable gardens and an herb-drying room, before moving into the cellar for tastings and a seven-course meal at the on-site restaurant. Named a World's 50 Best Vineyards discovery, it's a full-day commitment to the land-and-stars philosophy Michelini takes very seriously.

A refrigerator door in the back of a flower shop swings open after 8pm, and suddenly you're in a large underground cocktail bar. The speakeasy conceit is well-worn by now, but the gin program gives it something real to say: a co-founder helped create Príncipe de los Apóstoles, the Argentine gin built on yerba mate and eucalyptus. It ranked on the World's 50 Best Bars list, which tracks for a room this committed to the bit.

The menu says "this is not for everyone," and that's not false modesty: Doppelgänger stocks no beer, no wine, just a serious collection of spirits and vermouths. The cocktail bar pulls its look from 1920s and 30s Paris, Berlin, and New York, and it carries the attitude to match. Over 70 house originals share space with the classics, made with seasonal fruit and local ingredients. Come knowing what you want, or come ready to be told.

A cocktail bar in Palermo where Jules Verne sets the dress code: expect brass fittings, moody lighting, and a menu built around the cities Phileas Fogg visited in 80 days. The drinks do the traveling so you don't have to. Beer, wine, and gourmet hot dogs round things out for anyone who prefers to stay grounded. It draws a crowd most nights, so arriving early is the Fogg-approved strategy.

The unmarked entrance and exposed brick suggest a place that has been setting the template long enough to stop explaining itself. Gran Bar Danzón is a cocktail bar near the business district, which means the afterwork crowd fills the long, backlit bar early and the well-traveled hotel guests follow. The room tries slightly harder than it needs to, but the ambiance lands anyway, which is probably the truest sign of an old-school institution.

Chandeliers hang over the long bar, and a private room done up like a library handles overflow for anyone who takes their Negroni seriously. Presidente is a cocktail bar operating at the polished end of Buenos Aires nightlife, where the classics share menu space with signature drinks served inside miniature hot-air balloons. The crowd dresses for it, and the room rewards the effort.

Backlit bottles and jars line the bar like an apothecary's shelves, except the contents are house-made distillates, syrups, and infusions destined for cocktails. Al Fondo is a speakeasy bar tucked upstairs inside a half-restored historic house in Nuñez, all bare brick and textured plaster, dark enough that your eyes need a moment. The cocktail list is compact and inventive, and the room feels like a good secret someone finally told you.

The building is modeled on a Mayan pyramid, which tells you something about the ambition before you've tasted a drop. Catena Zapata is a winery tour and tasting experience in Luján de Cuyo, and the family behind it did more than anyone to put Argentine Malbec on the world map. Tours take you into the barrel room, where you drink straight from the cask alongside charcuterie. Book ahead.

The walls, the neon sign outside, and the staff uniforms are all the same shade of aggressive orange, so you'll spot this gin bar on Pasaje Echeverría before you've finished reading the street sign. Everything on the menu is built around juniper, which is either a red flag or the entire point depending on who you're with. A Discovery pick from The 50, it draws a crowd that has strong opinions about their Negroni variations.

Posters on the walls, a few tables out front, and cocktails that require more thought than the room lets on. El Limón is a cocktail bar in Villa Crespo with a concise list that rewards attention, including a sous-vide Negroni that earns its place without making a fuss about it. The whole operation has that loosely assembled look that tends to mean the person behind it knows exactly what they're doing.

The door policy here is not a rumor. Frank's is a speakeasy in Palermo Hollywood that takes the 1920s brief seriously, with a polished wooden bar, flocked wallpaper, and chandeliers in the plural. It's only open Wednesday through Saturday, and booking is less a suggestion than a condition of entry. The cocktails lean boozy, which tracks. A Discovery on The 50 list keeps it on the radar of people who visit cities for their bars.

You enter through a sushi restaurant, give a password, and surrender your phone at the door. Nicky Harrison is a speakeasy cocktail bar in Palermo that commits hard to the bit: low light, live jazz, tarot readings, and Prohibition-era drinks named for the era's shadier figures. The no-photos rule means the crowd actually talks to each other, which feels both radical and deeply old-fashioned. Named for a real bootlegger, which somehow makes the theatrics feel earned.

Cafayate sits at one of the highest winemaking elevations on earth, and Piattelli makes the most of the thin mountain air, turning Torrontés and Malbec into wines with a particular intensity you notice on the first sip. This Andean wine resort pairs vineyard visits and tastings with views of the surrounding valley that do most of the selling. A Discovery pick from The 50, it draws visitors who treat the drive through Salta's red-rock landscape as part of the experience.

The concrete eggs and oak barrels are the giveaway: this is a biodynamic winery tour where the family leads you through the farm and cellar themselves, no guide with a laminated card in sight. The concentric vineyards and octagonal Brutalist bodega sit in the Andean desert valleys, and the philosophy, organic and minimal-intervention all the way, shapes everything from the animals roaming the estate to the wine you sip straight from the vessel.

A full New York subway carriage sits in the middle of this Palermo Hollywood cocktail bar, considerably cleaner than anything the MTA runs. The concept goes deep: metro tiles, graffiti, transit ads, and a drinks menu organized by subway line. The theming could easily tip into theme-park territory, but the bartenders actually know what they're doing, and the room slides from low-key to full party without anyone announcing the transition.

Zorzal sits high in Gualtallary, where the altitude and volcanic soils are the whole point, and the team is happy to let you feel that firsthand. Depending on the season, visitors can prune, harvest, or simply cycle the vineyards before settling in for empanadas and grilled meats on the winery grounds. It's the kind of place where the winemaker might pull up a chair, which is either charming or terrifying depending on how many questions you have.

The metal cupola crowning this stone-and-cement winery catches your eye long before you reach the door, and the building earns the attention. Zuccardi's tours of their Uco Valley estate have a way of making soil types genuinely absorbing, thanks to a research team that treats concrete fermentation vessels as a design problem worth obsessing over. The 50 Discovery recognized it, which tracks for a place that turns a winery visit into something closer to an architecture seminar.

No sign outside, just a number that matches the address and a bouncer who'll point you right. Ocho7Ocho is a cocktail bar in Palermo that started as a speakeasy with a velvet-rope attitude, though the days of auditioned guest lists are long gone. The front room is roomy and deliberately scruffy, with classic rock and soul played loud enough to make conversation an achievement.

A convincing brick wall at the back of the café slides open to reveal a dim steampunk warehouse behind it, complete with a giant backlit clock all cogs and gears above the bar. Victoria Brown is a bar in Palermo that moonlights as a Victorian café by day, then leans into the theatre after dark. Old-fashioned armchairs cluster around the room, and the crowd on weekends skews young and dressed for it.