The 11 Best Places to Drink in Brazil

The granite counters and hammered metal walls give this underground cocktail bar in Pinheiros a deliberately angular, almost austere feel, as if someone transplanted a Tokyo standing bar to São Paulo and let it settle in. The house drinks lean on Brazilian ingredients, and the katsu sandos alongside suggest a long night is expected of you. It sits at number 24 on the World's 50 Best Bars list.

Exímia means the constant search for perfection in Latin, which tells you something about how seriously the team takes their cocktail bar on the second floor of Itaim Bibi. The drinks are a deep dive into Brazilian history and native ingredients, without a caipirinha in sight. Landing on The World's 50 Best Bars list, this is a place that makes the case for Brazil through the glass, anthropology and all.

Three floors do three different things here: a bar on the ground level, a snug dining room in the middle, and an open terrace on top for when the Rio night cooperates. The contemporary menu pulls from food cultures across the globe without announcing itself about it. The cocktail program is the real conversation starter, though, folding Amazonian ingredients like jambu and tucupi into drinks that have no right being as coherent as they are.

A whisky bar that grew out of a Brazilian whisky blog, which is exactly as obsessive as it sounds. Over 200 bottles line the shelves, with Brazilian single malt given proper room alongside the global canon, all poured in measured drams or themed flights. Cocktails follow their own logic, built around feelings rather than classics. There's a shop attached, in case you leave wanting more than a memory.

Cathedral ceilings, exposed brick, and tropical plants climbing around plush tweed stools set the mood at this cocktail bar in Pinheiros. The drinks lean deep into Brazil's botanical pantry, gin paired with tonka bean syrup, rue herb, and native cambuci fruit in combinations that sound unlikely until they don't. The kind of bar where you come in curious and leave converted to ingredients you couldn't have spelled when you arrived.

Cannoli at nine in the morning, a Spritz by noon, and a proper Italian cocktail by evening: Locale Caffè runs the full day shift without breaking a sweat. The Itaim Bibi space is relaxed enough for a quick espresso stop but shifts into something closer to a classic Italian cocktail bar once the sun goes down. The drinks lean on aperitivo instincts, herbaceous and citrus-forward, and the vibe follows.

Cocktails, pizza, music, and graffiti from São Paulo street artists: Picco has quietly figured out what a bar needs to be. The room is small enough that the backyard, covered in murals, becomes the main event on a good night. Drinks lean toward classics with a few playful signatures thrown in, and a fizzy, lemon-spiked mate shows up like it belongs. Pinheiros locals who came for one drink tend to stay for three.

A converted townhouse in Pinheiros that now operates as a cocktail bar, where the drinks list is organized chronologically, the way a serious person organizes a library. Gabriel Santana and his team treat the classics with real rigor, then slip in a handful of originals to keep things from feeling like a museum. You can drink inside in a compact lounge or out on the deck, which São Paulo weather makes an easy call most nights.