The 48 Best Places to Drink and Stay in Argentina

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.

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.

Galloping horse sculptures flank the entrance, and the polo theme carries right through to the leather-furnished Pony Line Lounge, which well-heeled Recoleta regulars treat as a personal living room. This Forbes Four Star hotel splits its 165 rooms between a modern tower and a Belle Époque mansion, the two connected through an outdoor pool and terrace. It holds a certain conviction that luxury and local character belong together, and the renovation made that argument in full.

A converted 1930s palace in Recoleta, built by a government minister who came back from France with big ideas and a fondness for Louis XVI excess. The silk curtains and crystal chandeliers are original to the spirit, if not always the fixtures. As Buenos Aires luxury hotels go, this one has the bones to back up the grandeur, with 165 rooms spread across the historic building and a modern wing tucked behind the garden.

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.

Crystal chandeliers, white-gloved bilingual butlers, and Louis XVI furniture so gilded you feel underdressed just reading the menu: the Alvear Palace is Recoleta's grand old palace hotel, and it leans into every bit of that. The lobby bar is a long-running theater for Argentine high society. A Forbes Four Star property, it also has a rooftop pool and bar with city views, a spa, and the Alvear Grill for when you'd like someone to fuss over you at dinner.

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.

The doormen wear top hats and long-tailed coats, which tells you everything about the register this luxury hotel is pitching. Inside, Philippe Starck went heavy on crimson and black marble, and the result feels more like a nightclub that happens to have rooms than the other way around. A Forbes Four Star property in Puerto Madero, it draws the kind of guests who don't need to ask where the pool bar is because someone already texted them.

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.

Every guest gets a personal butler, which sets the tone for this 23-story luxury hotel in Retiro, positioned conveniently close to Puerto Madero, Recoleta, and the Microcentro. The list of past guests, including Bill Clinton and a handful of European royals, suggests the staff has seen it all and remains unflappable. Two pools, clay tennis courts, and a round-the-clock concierge handle whatever the butler cannot.

Each of the seven suites here comes with its own massage table, soaking tub, and a "sensation shower," whatever that turns out to mean for you. It's a boutique luxury hotel in Mendoza wine country built around the name of Argentina's first female winemaker, so the cellar is encyclopedic and the tastings are the real curriculum. Heated deck loungers, fire pits, and wellness butlers round out a stay that leans hard into the fantasy.

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.

A Patagonian estancia-style lodge holding a Michelin 2 Keys distinction, EOLO sits on a sprawling ranch in the La Anita valley, well clear of El Calafate's glacier-tourist scramble. Suites mix antique vanities and plush beds with deep soaking tubs and picture windows over the windswept steppe. The restaurant runs traditional Argentinian fare, which lands well after a day on horseback or hiking near Perito Moreno, though the bathtub-with-Malbec option is apparently competitive.

Dome-shaped cabanas with private plunge pools, sitting on one of the largest wine estates in the world, with the snowcapped Andes as the backdrop. This intimate resort earns a Michelin Key, and the scale of the surroundings does most of the work: a thousand Mendoza wineries within reach, plus horses, mountain bikes, and a chef who handles the asado while you handle the Malbec.

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 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.

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.

Perched between two Patagonian lakes with the Andes behind it, this grand mountain lodge resort was built in the style of Canada's great railway hotels, all cypress timber, stone fireplaces, and Norman tile roofs. Golf, skiing in July, fishing, rafting, and condor watching keep guests occupied. Standard rooms are comfortable and well-appointed, and nearly every one looks out at water or snow-capped peaks, which does most of the decorating for them.

A concrete-and-glass wine resort poised beside a reflecting lake in the Uco Valley, with Andean peaks as backdrop and organic vegetables growing on the roof above your head. Rooms run from blonde-wood standards with mountain-view daybeds to suites whose terraces seem to float over the water, up to standalone villas with rooftop hot tubs. Horseback rides, a cedar sauna, and late steak dinners fill the gaps between bottles. It holds a Michelin Key.

Tucked into the Uco Valley on 1,500 acres of Andean vineyard, this modern resort holds 22 rustic-chic villas with private decks, stone bathrooms, and views of the mountains that make alarm clocks feel rude. Some have plunge pools or rooftop terraces; the two-bedroom comes with an outdoor clay tub facing the peaks. Francis Mallmann's open-flame restaurant is on-site, gauchos lead the horseback rides, and the infinity pool handles the rest. Getting here takes some doing, which turns out to suit the mood perfectly. The resort holds a Michelin Key.

Getting here means a van to the dock, then three hours by boat across Lago Argentino and up into its glacial arms, mountains rearing on every side. The reward is a remote Patagonian lodge, earning a Michelin Key, where four cottages hold twenty rooms, each anchored by a picture window facing the peaks. Treks to the Upsala glacier or on horseback fill the days; raw wood and warm textures handle the evenings. Everything but the drinks is included, which feels like the right priority.

Horses graze past the communal breakfast table at this working farm turned boutique hotel in the Buenos Aires pampas, which holds a Michelin Key. Guest rooms keep their original wood-beamed ceilings, afternoon tea moves to a sunny patio, and family-style dinners lean on local produce, with an Argentine barbecue if timing is on your side. The artist owner's paintings hang throughout, which gives the whole place a lived-in ease that most rural retreats spend years faking.

An old Argentine estancia an hour north of Córdoba, set in the Sierras Chicas foothills on land that once served as a presidential summer retreat. The luxury resort spreads across historic ranch buildings with brick ceilings, canopied beds, and chandeliers, all looking out over gardens laid out by French landscape architect Charles Thays. Polo fields, a golf course, and several bars and restaurants round out what is, quietly, a very serious amount of property to wander.

A cobalt-blue wooden lodge on the Nahuel Huapi Lake shore, with a private dock and Andean peaks filling every window, Las Balsas is a lakefront resort that leans hard into the fairytale it accidentally became. Stone fireplaces, exposed beams, and vaulted ceilings set the tone indoors, while every room faces the water. The team arranges sailing, fly fishing, and horseback riding, and the heated infinity pool runs year-round, because Patagonia in winter is not for the faint of heart.

A ten-room boutique hotel perched on a cliff above Lake Nahuel Huapi, about twenty minutes outside Bariloche, which means no wandering to town but also no other hotel between you and the water. The design skips the alpine kitsch the region is famous for in favor of wood beams, gray stone, and clean lines. An indoor-outdoor pool lets you swim under Patagonian stars, and each room has a private lake-view terrace. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

The nine-hole golf course sits inside working vineyards, which tells you immediately what kind of person Algodon Wine Estates is designed for. This Mendoza wine-country resort splits between an antique adobe villa and a newer lodge, both with fireplaces in every room and stone-tiled bathrooms stocked with wine-therapy products. The restaurant pulls in outside guests too, pouring Malbec and Bonarda grown on the property alongside an organic regional menu.

Suites here come standard with jacuzzis aimed squarely at Lake Nahuel Huapi, which is one way to start the morning. This intimate lodge sits a short drive outside Bariloche, close enough for a dinner run but far enough that the Patagonian wilderness feels like the whole point. Rooms range from suites with kitchenettes up to full residences with wood-burning stoves. The spa handles whatever the hiking and ski slopes leave behind.

Perched on a hill above Nahuel Huapi lake in Patagonia's ski country, this design hotel looks like someone dropped a futuristic lake lodge into the Andes and decided to go with it. Natural wood and leather fill spaces that manage to feel minimal and cozy at once, with picture windows doing the heavy lifting. Rooms range from forest-facing standards to jacuzzi suites with lake views. Bariloche's famously raucous après-ski is a short drive away.

The nine guest rooms here have hand-painted murals touched up annually by the original artist, which tells you something about how this estancia in the Córdoba hills operates. It's a small, ranch-style Relais & Châteaux property an hour from the city, with fireplaces, wood floors, and views of open grassland and horses. The kitchen runs on an open fire and draws supplies from the farm next door.

The Malbec vines outside your window are the same ones that made what's in your glass at dinner. This small, owner-run wine estate boutique hotel in San Rafael keeps just six rooms across six hectares of vines, olive trees, and irrigation channels that remind you this is a working farm, not a set. Vintage armchairs and botanical prints share space with proper mattresses, breakfast uses local fruit and house-baked bread, and the Andes sit behind the pool doing their thing.

A resort on the Beagle Channel just outside Ushuaia, which puts the Patagonian wilderness directly outside every window and makes the interior design feel beside the point. Rustic materials meet clean lines in the rooms, but guests mostly use the place as a very comfortable base camp for the surrounding national parks and waterways. A full-service spa and serious kitchen are on hand for the nights when the end of the world can wait.

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.