The Best Cocktail Bars in Oxford

A cocktail bar spread across three retro-styled levels in Jericho, Raoul's crams Oxford's largest spirits selection into alcoves behind a surprisingly small bar. Rum is the obsession, including a house blend aged in a Madeira cask, though bourbon runs a close second. The fruit-forward cocktails go through more produce than most grocers shift in a week, and the room has the easy, happy hum of a place that's been doing this for a long time.

A cocktail bar inside Oxford's grand Macdonald Randolph Hotel, where the wood-panelled walls are lined with photographs of the late actor who played Inspector Morse, the TV detective whose cases were partly filmed here. The show has been off air for decades, which gives the shrine-like décor a pleasantly eccentric quality. Fortunately, the arched ceiling, ornate cornices, and stone fireplace make it a handsome room to drink in regardless.

The oval wooden bar at the center of the room is what orients you first, then the checkerboard tiles, the palms, the terracotta pots, and the tea lights doing their gentle work. This Cowley Road bar runs coffee by day and cocktails by night, with around fifteen classics plus house originals on the menu. The crowd skews local and unhurried, the kind who know the difference between an aperitif and a digestif and order both.

The name sounds like a pub, but the Duke of Cambridge is a cocktail bar, and a proudly self-proclaimed long-standing one at that. A long wooden bar runs one wall, circular booths line the other, and the wide-open floor between them exists for a reason: this place fills up. Happy hour runs four nights a week for four hours, which tells you more about the vibe than any descriptor could.

The cocktail bar at Malmaison Oxford is set inside a former Victorian prison, and the original cell bars are still on the windows. The main bar sits on the third floor in what used to be the visitors room, high-ceilinged and dressed in the plush fabrics and dark furniture the Malmaison group does reliably well. It's the kind of place where the surroundings do most of the talking, which is fine, because the surroundings are a jail.