Five cocktail bars, chosen on the record: two Spirited Awards nominees.
ADIÕS opened in downtown Birmingham in November 2022, founded by José Medina Camacho and Jesús Méndez, both born in Mexico and raised in northern Alabama, as a bar of classic cocktails remade with Mexican-grown spirits and ingredients. The room draws on the music and art of Mexico City, with tropical plants, antique chapel stained glass, Oaxacan prints and a year-round Día de los Muertos ofrenda.
Bygones calls itself a classy cocktail joint on 22nd Street South, and its summer menu is built on Alabama produce and house bitters, a Cardinal in a Pine Tree of white rum, Chilton County strawberries and young pine cones, an espresso martini with Chilton peaches and Eastaboga honey, and a Caribbean Carrot Negroni on three rums. Reservations are by text, and several drinks come in alcohol-free versions.
Juniper describes itself as a cozy and elegant cocktail bar and restaurant in the Forest Park historic district, with a lush garden courtyard and a botanical interior modelled on the ornate gin palaces of the Victorian era. Its line is let the fun be gin: the list is gin-focused but the inventive cocktail menu ranges wider, and the bar calls itself your neighbourhood bar, reimagined, with dinner, brunch and a Sunday supper alongside.
Pilcrow Cocktail Cellar is hidden beneath Founders Station in a historic 1881 cellar, its entrance in an alley between two restaurants, marked, as the bar says, by a red sign. It describes itself as Birmingham's favourite hidden underground bar, craft cocktails with friendly service in an intimate room, open from four on most days and until two on Friday and Saturday.
The Collins Bar does not use a menu. Every drink is made custom by the bartenders, so, as the bar puts it, they are as unique as you are; guests who need a starting point pick their preferences from a card and hand it across. It bills itself as Birmingham's finest cocktail bar, on Second Avenue North, open from four until midnight on weeknights and until two on Friday and Saturday.
These are the cocktail bars specifically. The full Birmingham guide ranks the best bars of every style, and the directory lists all 6 with a map and filters.
Best bars in Birmingham