Best Cocktail Bars in North Carolina

North Carolina's cocktail scene runs from Charlotte's skyline to the old storefronts of Asheville. The best cocktail bars in North Carolina start in downtown Raleigh at Bittersweet, a cocktail and dessert lounge and a 2024 James Beard Award semifinalist for Outstanding Bar. Kingfisher in Durham, a semifinalist in 2023, pours ground to glass cocktails from a basement on East Chapel Hill Street. Merchant & Trade, the rooftop bar of the Kimpton Tryon Park Hotel, looks over Uptown Charlotte from 19 floors up. In Asheville, Little Jumbo fills the old Jenkins grocery by Montford, and Character Study is a literary bar in West Asheville. Bittersweet takes no reservations and closes Monday and Tuesday. These are the bars we would start with.