The bar of the Rosewood Munich, in a former state bank and palace on Kardinal-Faulhaber-Strasse. Named after Lola Montez, the dancer whose affair with Ludwig I cost him his crown, and furnished to match: high ceilings, heavy stone and a long counter, with a list built around Bavarian and Alpine spirits.
A Haidhausen bar built around rum, with a list that travels from the Caribbean and Latin America through Panama to India and Australia. The room is classical and unshowy and the bar treats the category as a subject to be worked through rather than a shelf to be shown off.
A Breaking Bad themed bar in Schwabing, and more serious about the drinks than the premise suggests. The room is staged as a lab, the cocktails are built with theatrical presentation, and the team describe the whole thing as an obsession rather than a gimmick.
Inside the Haus der Kunst on Prinzregentenstrasse, under 1930s gold-leaf murals of the wine and spirit regions of the world. It works as a cafe by day and a cocktail bar at night, with a terrace onto the Englischer Garten, and the room is the reason to come as much as the list.
The bar of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, set in the mirrored hall of 1839 that was the only room in the building to come through the war intact. An island counter under a rococo plaster ceiling, gilt mirrors down the walls, and a list of classics and house creations. It has been a Munich late-night fixture since 1945.
The bar of the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Kempinski on Maximilianstrasse, Munich's grandest shopping street. Panelled, quiet and unhurried, it serves the hotel's guests and the city's older money in roughly equal measure, with a classics-led list and a piano most evenings.
The upstairs room above Schumann's on Odeonsplatz, run as its own bar rather than an overflow: darker, quieter and more deliberate than the ground floor, with a list that leans on Charles Schumann's own canon of classics. One of four rooms the Schumann's name covers in Munich.
Charles Schumann's Munich institution, facing the Hofgarten from Odeonsplatz. The house style is spare and classical, a short list of drinks made without ceremony by a team in white jackets, and it has shaped how a generation of German bartenders think about a cocktail. Open from morning through to late.
These 8 are the starting point. The full BarMagazine directory covers every listed bar in Munich, with a map, filters by bar type, and new openings as we verify them.
All bars in Munich