The Best Cocktail Bars in New Zealand

You reach the bar by descending a staircase and passing through a doorway flanked by paint tins, which sets up one expectation and then doesn't deliver it. Caretaker is a dim, NYC-styled speakeasy cocktail bar with Sunday jazz and bartenders who'd rather talk to you than hand you a laminated menu. Tell them what you're in the mood for and let them build something around it.

A cocktail bar on Tory Street where the menu runs from pre-Prohibition classics to drinks built around white anchovy oil and oyster shell-infused gin. The list treats history as a starting point rather than a destination, so you can order something a century old or something that sounds like a dare. Either way, the bartenders clearly mean business, and the kind of crowd that notices will find them here.

Tucked above Minibar up a flight of stairs, this one-room cocktail bar has a vaulted ceiling and a sliver of a view over the corner below. It's a little rough around the edges, which is precisely its charm: bartenders drink here on their nights off, and by midnight the music has climbed accordingly. They chill the wine glasses before pouring cold whites, which tells you something about where their priorities sit.

Absinthe fountains, crystal decanters, and gold bartending equipment crowd the shelves of this cocktail bar, lit almost entirely by tea-lights. The menu sorts drinks by historical category, fizzes and daisies and the rest, each with a footnote on who invented it and where. The vibe is full-throated heritage emporium, which makes the thumping dance music either a charming contradiction or a minor existential crisis, depending on your mood.