Five of the best whisky bars in the world

A new app for whisky lovers pinpoints the best places to drink a dram across the globe.

Whisky Magazine’s Great Whisky Bars of the World 2012 app displays locations of its top-rated whisky bars on world maps, ensuring that wherever your travels take you you’re never far from the next whisky bar. Here are our top five from their picks.

Harry’s New York Bar, 5 Rue Daunou, Paris

Between the Avenue de l’Opéra and the Rue de la Paix, legendary barely covers Harry’s Bar in Paris. Founded in 1911 and bought by its Dundonian bartender Harry MacElhone in 1923, it’s still run by his family. Hemingway, Sartre, Fitzgerald, Chanel, and Bogart were all regulars, and according to Ian Fleming’s 1960 novel A View To A Kill, a night in Harry’s led to James Bond’s inaugural encounter with a lady, hence the mythical status this Parisian institution has achieved. Harry’s is the birthplace of the Bloody Mary and the Sidecar, but also serves more than 300 different whiskies.

Bascule Whisky Bar, Cape Grace Hotel, Waterfront, Cape Town

Home to the largest collection of single malts south of the equator, the Bascule Bar stocks more than 460 whiskies and, if you join its whisky club, provides individual locked cabinets in which to store your own selection. Housed in a historic luxury hotel overlooking a marina packed with multi-million pound yachts, over which Table Mountain towers, there can be few more elegant settings in which to take a dram.


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