The best specialist bars in Singapore

Spirit hunters visiting Asia for the first time should stop by Native for an education on what the region has to offer. Well-known urban forager and award-winning bartender Vijay Mudalier is the brains behind this bar that thrives on showcasing flavours unique to Singapore and the cities that surround us. Ascend the flight of stairs located along Amoy Street and you’ll find a healthy stock of regional spirits such as Indian whisky, Cambodian rum, Thai gin and Indonesian arrack. Cocktails highlight the local terroir, where you'll find familiar ingredients like curry leaves, kampot pepper, buah keluak, blue pea flower and candlenut.

Over at Auld Alliance, class and old world charm drip from timber wood surfaces and plush leather couches. The menu is as thick as your average encyclopaedia, and you'll be dazzled by choice with over 40 whisky flights (starting from $40). Its range covers whiskies from the most popular distilleries in Scotland to the dark horses from other European towns.

Tucked away in a corner of Oasia Hotel, with floor to ceiling glass doors that open out to an alfresco space, Cin Cin stocks over 100 different types of gin on its shelves. Here's exactly where you can get you after-work martinis, gin and tonics, gimlets, Tom Collins, negronis, French 75s, vespers, corpse revivers (because we could all use one after a dreadful workday) – and more. As a bonus for the hedonists, the bar runs Gin Treasury every Saturday, where you can flounder your way through a list of predetermined gins, free-flow style, for three hours at just $68 per head. 

At this art deco-inspired bar that Jay Gatsby would be proud to patronise, ordering a simple G&T won’t do. Atlas has upwards of 1,000 bottles of gin, housed in a three-storey-high tower, that have been sourced from more than 40 countries. So if you’ve ever wanted to sample gins from Greece, Estonia or Moldova, here’s your chance. Most of these are rare or vintage spirits, too, with prices to match: a martini made with gin from the 1910s, for instance, will set you back $250. But pull yourself back to Earth and scan through the leather-bound menu for more affordable tipples like The Atlas Martini ($24) crafted with London dry gin.

Shelves of backlit bottles cast an amber glow upon this cavernous restaurant and bar that deals in sumiyaki and whisky. While you’ll find whiskies the world over on the menu here, The Wall is especially proud of its Japanese malt collection – and rightfully so. There is much more on offer than the sought-after expressions from the exalted Suntory distilleries of Yamazaki and Hakushu. Single-grain whisky from Chita, special Ichiro’s Malt expressions from Chichibu and Hanyu, and ultra-rare bottles from Karuizawa (a vintage from 1963, anyone?) are available, too.

You know you’ve struck gold when the largest distributors of sake in Singapore operate a standing bar. Among its impressive roster of alcoholic options, Japanese whiskies, umeshu, gin and shochu, comes the pièce de résistance – over 400 exclusive labels from more than 40 sake breweries. Traverse the land of the rising sun, one tipple at a time, starting with the premium Bijofu Junmai Daiginjo from Kochi prefecture, to the small-batched Musubiyui Junmai Daiginjo hailing from Ibaraki and finally further south to the Fukuoka prefecture for Niwa no Uguisi Junamai Ginjo. Accompany your spirited road trip across Japan with sake bar bites such as edamame and smoked stingray fin. 

Unlike sake, which is made by fermenting rice, shochu is distilled from rice, barley, sweet potatoes and other starchy ingredients. And at RPM by D.Bespoke, you can find a wide range to get yourself acquainted with this spirit. Sample different types of by ordering a tasting flight ($35), which offers a sampler of Ikenotsuyu sweet potato shochu from Kumamoto, Dabada chestnut shochu from Kochi and incredibly smooth Asagiri No Hana rice shochu from Kumamoto. Don’t like it neat? Most of the cocktails on RPM’s menu, from the lighter lemon sour ($23) and dark and stormy ($23) to the more spirit-forward negroni ($23) and barrel-aged taimatsu ($25), use shochu as its base and go down like a dream.

Despite its core business profile, La Maison du Whisky throws a forceful curveball in the rum arena with more than 80 varieties of rum, bringing a touch of Caribbean spirit to the riverside establishment. It stocks white rum, navy rum, spiced rum, aged rum and rhum agricole, but fret not if your eyes are starting to glaze over – with passionate retailers on deck, you're in safe hands. A couple of our picks include the Clairin Vaval ($25 for 45ml) hailing from Cavaillon, which comes with a subtle notes of vanilla scent and saffron; the lord of funk, Hampden Estate 46% ($33 for 45ml pour), which is best drunk neat and the Neisson XO Full Proof ($80 for 45ml), which showcases endless legs of herbaceous freshness and soft spices.

Palm plants, rattan furniture and hanging bird cages make this second-floor shophouse bar seem more like a friend’s living room – until you spy the racks of spirits that line the wall. Given owner Chris Morris’ Caribbean roots, Bago is devoted to all manner of rums. There are dozens of labels of rum, rhum and ron (respectively, British-, French- and Spanish-style rums) that you can sip neat or shaken up in a cocktail. From typical Bacardi expressions to cult favourites like Diplomatico Reserva to little-known distilleries such as New Grove in Mauritius, Bago isn’t kidding about its rum credentials. The bar even concocts its own rum infusions with herbs and spices. If you can’t decide which to go for, check out the menu’s Bago Build section: you pick your flavours and ‘mood’, and let the bartender mix up a tipple ($25) based on your preferences.

When translated, the name of this modern Korean bar and restaurant means ‘alcohol’. Specifically, it’s makgeolli – Korean rice wine – that takes centre-stage, with owners Jamie and Kristin Lim brewing and serving this milky white drink on tap. Newbies to makgeolli can try the sampler ($35), which includes Joo’s four in-house creations in flavours such as yucha, mango and strawberry. The house-brewed makgeolli ($7/mini, $15/small, $28/large) can be paired with Kimcheese Bacon Pancake ($22) and Joo bossam ($28), made with boiled Mangalitsa pork belly.