Bar Benfiddich

Hiroyasu Kayama grows his own botanicals on a farm in Tokigawa, Saitama and carries them into a ninth-floor Shinjuku bar where every cocktail begins with produce he harvested personally. Ranked No. 18 on the World's 50 Best and No. 9 on Asia's list—earning Best Bar in Japan—Benfiddich operates as a farm-to-counter manifesto. Kayama crushes spices by hand in a brass mortar at the bar, distils ingredients in-house, and builds drinks that taste of specific seasons in specific Japanese soil. No other bar programme on earth is this directly connected to the land.