The best London bars delivering cocktails to your door

Bethnal Green’s spirit-focused boozer The Sun Tavern comes from the folks behind Umbrella Brewing, so they were quick to suss out how to distribute good liquor to Londoners staying safe at home. You can currently select two from eight bottled versions of the classics and have them delivered to your door as part of a full ‘Quarantini Kit’ (nice!). Choose from the likes of an Old Fashioned, a Boulevardier or even a Banana Daiquiri (forget the banana bread in Lockdown 2, you’re gonna need something stronger).

Kits cost £30, www.thesuntavern.co.uk

While we can’t imagine two of Swift’s most famous cocktails travelling especially well – one an Irish Coffee and the other a sorbet-topped Sgroppino – the Soho bar still has plenty of intoxicating drinks to offer by the bottle while its doors stay shut. The Swift Bottle Shop sells pre-batched wonders that can be poured over ice or topped with soda or sparkling wine, from a Whisky Highball to a Solstice Spritz. Bottles vary in size, but either serve five, seven or ten cocktails. Still desperate for that Irish Coffee, though? They have a DIY kit for that, don’t worry.

£28 per bottle, www.speakeasyathome.com/swift

London’s meaty restaurant group delighted locked-down Londoners last time around with a Hawksmoor at Home kit featuring a steak the size of your face plus a whole lot of booze. This time – and given that we’re well into Christmas party season – it’s decided to further hone in on the alcohol options. You can still order stomach-busting rib-eye kits, but we recommend getting in a round of the best bottled Martinis going. Or one of four new cute canned cocktails – ideal if you’re drinking solo (no judgement!) – including a twist on the Cosmo filled with ‘natty’ orange wine.

From £12, www.thehawksmoor.com

You know what every lockdown needs? A magnum of Negroni. The team behind Three Sheets knows exactly what its customers want right now. The Dalston bar is batching up cocktails that are then being sent out far and wide via sister bar and restaurant Top Cuvée’s online store, Shop Cuvée (made very famous during Lockdown 1). You can also order its Earth Martini and Old Fashioned, or the ever-popular French 75, which is served straight from the bottle in the bar, anyway.

Cocktails from £29, www.shopcuvee.com

Our number one bar in London is ambitious as ever, despite London’s lockdown. Bottled cocktails from Tayēr (the more elevated of the pair in this two-part bar concept) are now available to order from their very own online off-licence. The range of five special drinks includes a Sandalwood Martini that you store in the freezer before serving – and that could probably also double as lockdown cologne (in a good way!). Other cocktails feature their very own range of Muyu liqueurs. It’s seriously refined at-home imbibing.  

From £30, shop.tayer-elementary.com

Crouch End locals and beyond can still be blessed with brilliant bevvies. Five-star neighbourhood bar Little Mercies is batching up some of its memorable cocktails for nationwide delivery. Add a little sweetness to life at home with a pre-made Bellini, a Strawberry Cake Sazerac, or the bar’s much-loved White Chocolate Old Fashioned, bottled to serve six to eight tipples. Or go the whole hog and order a three-bottle bundle for £75 – variety is the spice of lockdown, as the old adage goes.

From £25, www.littlemercies.co.uk

Create the right atmosphere for cocktail hour. Not only will hip listening bar Spiritland deliver the liquid goods – a Chamomile Paloma, a Quince Old Fashioned and a White Negroni all bottled options, starting from £10 – but each order comes with a QR code that directs you to the tunes. In the Before Times, you could find anyone from Jarvis Cocker to Alexis Taylor DJing at the bar, so expect a playlist to be filled with genre-defying bangers. Your lockdown needs this.

From £10, www.spiritland.com/shop

Yes, the Margarita may be one of the easier cocktails to master at home (tequila, triple sec, lime), but it’s hard to recreate Hacha’s Mirror Margarita – a drink Time Out named the best in London. Lucky for you, then, that this Dalston bar is winging bottles of the cocktail to doors nationwide. Each packs in four serves of the see-through take on the classic. And if limes can fight scurvy, who knows what else they may be good for?

£70 for two bottles, www.hachabar.com

We recommend you turn the lights down really low and the trad jazz music up really high when enjoying Nightjar’s cocktails at home. After all, it’ll be the experience side of things you’ll miss the most from one of London’s best-loved speakeasies. But the fantastic drinks can still be enjoyed by the bottle, including a Barrel Aged Zombie containing four different types of rum. Try saying ‘speakeasy’ three times fast after that. Sister speakeasy Oriole is also in on the bottled act.

From £15, www.speakeasyathome.co.uk

It feels like we could all do with rescuing – from the humdrum, mostly. Well, Bao has felt your need. The restaurant group branched out into cocktail delivery earlier this year, servicing much of north-east London with The Cocktail Rescue – and now it’s gone nationwide. Futuristic-looking cocktail pouches, each containing five pours, are great for slinging in the freezer in case of emergencies. For whisky lovers, there’s a highball or a Milk Tea Old Fasioned. But ours is a tantalisingly tart-tasting Umeshu Negroni made with plum sake.

From £18, www.baolondon.com/shop

While this West Hampstead bar has two sides to it – a bright ground-floor venue for low-alc cocktails and a naughty little basement for boozier drinks and party times – in lockdown, it’s gone for one strategy: keeping locals in good spirits. Those in a four-mile radius can get same-day delivery on pre-batched cosmos and espresso martinis. Or sample a more imaginative Angel Face made from gin, apricot liqueur and still cider.

From £15, www.headsandtails.bar

Most bars are focusing on getting their polished drinks to punters, but Little Nan’s Bar is channelling its frenetic energy into bringing the vibes to yours. Its lockdown party bags and boxes contain all the bits and pieces you need to throw a kitsch bash in your own flat plus a jam-jar cocktail to pour over ice and enjoy. You can also purchase or hire party props with your drinks, if you want to go all out (you totally should – when will lockdown happen again, eh?).

£27 per party bag, www.littlenans.co.uk

First, Dishoom supplied a taste of its cult bacon naan roll for stuck-at-home Londoners when the restaurant group released a DIY kit on delivery. Each kit contains ingredients to make a masala chai on the side. But what if you fancy something stronger to wash it down with? Well, now they’ve sorted that part too with the launch of a bottled cocktail range featuring some of the familiar favourites: the old-fashioned, bottle-aged negroni and gimlet are all available nationwide – and bloody delicious!

From £14, www.store.dishoom.com

Forward-thinking, zero-waste Hackney bar Scout has always been ahead of the curve. Now it’s sending out bottled cocktails to those in need by partnering with Shop Cuvee (see Three Sheets above). The bar is sending out two takes on the Martini to customers in 200ml versions, costing £18. Or visit Scout’s own website for a wider range of spectacular bevvies, but for a slightly taller delivery fee.  

From £18, www.shopcuvee.com

The sister bar to Nightjar and Swift also has the lockdown cocktails on lock. You can order by the pouch or bottle. The cocktails are straight off the menu of the subterranean Smithfield night spot and contain the same tropical ingredients. The main points of difference at home are probably the glassware and garnishes; find the weirdest vessel at the back of your cupboard and a cocktail umbrella, and then imagine it’s the real deal. 

From £15, www.speakeasyathome.co.uk

While Duke’s isn’t directly running a delivery service, the famous fancy Martini haunt’s head bartender Alessandro Palazzi has crafted a pre-batched Vesper Martini formula that’s now available to purchase via London wine merchants Berry’s Bros & Rudd. It’s fragrant, beautifully balanced and best of all, you can just whack it in the freezer and grab it at cocktail ‘o clock. It might not be the Duke’s experience but it’s a little bit of the luxury that we so desperately miss.

£29.95, www.bbr.com

Punters in Highbury and Islington can still take advantage of having the Four Sisters on the doorstep. The cute cocktail bar has opened up its boozy offerings to Deliveroo. Order from four bottled cocktails on the delivery app, which can simply be poured over ice when they arrive at your home. The range includes a Tea Old Fashioned and a Camomile Gimlet.

£25 per bottle, Deliveroo

Do you live within nine miles of Hoxton? Then Happiness could be at your fingertips. Brilliant east London bar Happiness Forgets is now mixing at-home cocktails. Get next-day delivery on orders placed from Wednesday to Saturday and for libations as adventurous as a Biscoff Old Fashioned, a Bloody Martini and the bar’s very famous Tokyo Collins, which is pictured above. Have a go at making your’s look just as delicious. 

From £15, www.happinessforget.com

Lyaness has finally jumped on the delivery wagon and we couldn’t be happier – it means enjoying drinks from one of the world’s greatest bartenders, Mr Lyan, in the comfort of our own homes. Wacky drinks on the menu from Lyaness at Home include a Beetle Boulevardier and a Rock Pool Sazerac – each available in measures for one person, two people or a group of five to share, should you be lucky enough to have a buzzing little flatshare to keep you occupied right now.

From £13, via Deliveroo

You can make spending all your time in your flat into a fiesta by ordering from Soho’s original Mexican bar The Pink Chihuahua. It launched The Pink Chihuahua Bottleshop in Lockdown 1 and has restocked for this wave. Ten cocktails from its menu – many involving tequila – are available in two sizes (either two or six drinks per bottle). And, they’re offering delivery in London within the hour. Usually, outings to this bar are best reserved for late at night, but we won’t tell anyone if you choose to drink yours a bit earlier from home.   

From £15, www.thepinkchihuahua.bigcartel.com

This cocktail delivery service goes the extra mile by sending ice along with your order. And it’s from the cabin-like watering hole beneath Ollie Dabbous’ swanky Green Park restaurant, so you can also order a Michelin-star feast while you’re at it (well, if you’re lucky enough to be within a seven-mile radius and don’t mind a bit of a splurge). Cocktails serve two and include the Adam and Eve, a clarified milk punch whose giant ice cube we marvelled at when we visited the bar for a review. Here’s hoping it doesn’t melt in transit.

£20 per cocktail, www.hide.co.uk

Black Rock is one of a handful of awesome watering holes to work with drink distributor Highball Brands on new delivery service The Drinks Drop. Place an order from anywhere in London before 3pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays to guarantee same-day delivery of a £7.50 cocktail in an extra-chilled pouch.The Shoreditch whisky haunt is providing a non-whisky cocktail to its London-wide fans (if you want the hard stuff from these guys, sign up to their whisky subscription service, instead – it’s pretty neat). Tropical Thunder and its a sweet blend of Ncnean botanical spirit (like a non-juniper gin), pineapple and coconut. Who says Piña Coladas are a summer drink?

£7.50 per cocktail, www.thedrinksdrop.com

While it’s the fried chicken most locals to Haggerston are excited to have back in their lives now Chick ‘n’ Sours is delivering again, the venue’s eponymous sour cocktails are really, really great and are now available for delivery for the first time ever. There are four of them to choose from, and each bottle contains two 125ml serves and can be poured straight over ice and enjoyed. You should probably get some chicken wings on the side for the complete experience.

Cocktails from £15, via Deliveroo

Kentish Town’s fun-loving basement bar is bringing the action to you with its £5 drink pouches – a range it’s calling ‘Disco Cocktails’. You can order them to your gaff from anywhere in the UK, and party-ready drinks in the range include a Disco Piña Colada, a Disco Porn Star Martini and a Disco Cherry Sour. Groovy. 

From £5, www.ladiesandgents.co

Modern Scottish restaurant Mac & Wild had been big in the bottled cocktail game long before a thing called the C Word came along. You can order their pre-batched Dundee Sour or Auld Pal Negroni or try one of the newer offerings for these times, like an Espresso Martini or Wild Fizz. Or pick up one of their festive DIY kits to really get into the spirit of staying at home. 

From £25 per bottle, www.macandwild.com

Also on The Drinks Drop (see above) is Islington’s rum-filled haven Laki Kane, which usually provides the area with its desert island drinks fix. You can now say a big ‘aloha’ to the Espresso Mulatini, a cocktail filled with rum, Guinness, chocolate wine and coffee, of course. If you’ve got a tiki-shaped hole in your life, have it filled by the evening. Other bars on The Drinks Drop include Trailer Happiness, Coupette, Satan’s Whiskers, Doña Bar, Artesian and Happiness Forgets. 

£7.50, www.thedrinksdrop.com