That pursuit led Dizard to a process called “densing,” which he’d been following online. The technique was developed by Iain McPherson, founder of the lauded Panda & Sons in Edinburgh, Scotland. McPherson is known for his mad-science tinkering and innovation; in his bar lab, dubbed the “Brain Melting Society,” he has invented influential techniques like “sous pression,” “switching” and “cryo concentration.”  

Using a vacuum blender to integrate oils into liquids, densing boosts the texture of drinks. McPherson likens the process to emulsification, but without the need for binders or thickeners, and its effects to fat-washing, though this method captures and retains more aromas. 

“When you express citrus oils over [a Martini or Old-Fashioned], that beautiful orange or lemon aroma is incredibly vibrant at first, but it gradually fades as you drink,” he explains. “With densing, we can integrate those oils directly into the spirit, meaning the aroma remains consistent from the first step to the last.” There are also visual results from densing: The process creates “that beautiful louche effect you see when adding water to absinthe or non-chill-filtered whisky,” he says. Incorporating fats like olive oil plays with color, too, softening a bright red Negroni to a pastel peachy pink, for example. It’s an unexpected, but welcome look in a sea of clarified cocktails. 

Here’s how it works: Everything goes into the vacuum blender, which is essentially a blender that removes air while blending; this is typically used to prevent oxidation and create smoother, more consistent textures. McPherson says it’s important to keep all liquids, fat and spirit, around the same temperature—he suggests between 40 and 60 degrees centigrade, or 104 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit—and that using about 0.5 to 2.5 percent fat is the optimal proportion. After a run (or two or three) of the blender, the fat becomes so wholly absorbed into the spirit that they become one inseparable liquid.

McPherson has been an open book with his techniques. “When I saw some of the videos Iain uploaded online,” Dizard recalls, “I sent one to [Tin’s bar director Bowen Kirkwood] and said, ‘What is a vacuum blender and how fast can we get one?’ By the time he responded to my text, I’d already found and bought it.”

The Dako-Ri at Tin’s.

The Dako-Ri is an ode to Dako Tea, a tea shop that Dizard and Tin visited on their honeymoon in Yunnan, China. It specializes in a drink he calls “remarkable” with tea, honey, lemongrass and aromatic local citrus. To capture the memory of that drink in a Daiquiri, Tin’s taps fresh lemongrass in a rum infusion, a syrup made with Mao Jian tea, fresh lime juice and—thanks to densing—olive oil.

Though the Dako-Ri uses a cutting-edge technique, it was important to Dizard to maintain the familiar format of the classic: rum, lime, sugar. “Anything else, and it can be a great drink, but not a Daiquiri,” says Dizard. While he did “take a little bit of liberty,” he stuck close to the script. The lemongrass infusion brings grassiness and extra brightness, and the tea contributes a toasted sticky rice flavor with a hint of savoriness in the finish. The olive oil provides a beautifully rounded texture.

“Some of the best versions of Daiquiris I’ve had skew a little sweeter than they technically should be” in order to get the right mouthfeel, says Dizard. On the other hand, “a lot of contemporary interpretations take it really lean, really acidic, often with an ounce of lime to three-quarters of an ounce of sweeter proportions. We flip that… and in combination with the olive oil emulsion, you get both the upfront [and] the acidity.”

For the Dako-Ri, Dizard pours all the ingredients into the vacuum blender, then reduces the atmospheric pressure inside the chamber, allowing the oil and other ingredients to emulsify. Dizard uses a one-percent olive oil proportion, by weight, in relation to the infused rum. In the vacuum blender, he sets the mix to have three-minute agitations with 30-second rests in between.

Why not just fat-wash the drink? For one, this method maintains the Daiquiri’s acidity. For another, “a fat-wash technique might take 12 to 14 hours, and might leave subtle residue,” Dizard says. Densing, meanwhile, “takes about 15 minutes.” The team can also produce larger batches of cocktails because the vacuum-blender emulsion creates a more stable, not separated, liquid. “I have a pint-glass tester of dense rum that’s been sitting for six months at ambient temperature,” says Dizard. “It hasn’t changed at all.”

A vacuum blender can cost anywhere from $350 to $2,000, but for Dizard, it’s a worthy investment. He says the tool could transform prep for other bar teams. Tin’s not only uses the blender for its densed Dako-Ri, but also to infuse olive oil into mezcal for its El Popular cocktail. “The prep time, refrigerator time and space and labor time saved is remarkable,” says Dizard.

Whether it’s playing with the ratios or introducing new ingredients to the format—olive brine in a dirty Negroni, for example, or the many mezcal Negronis—these riffs prove that even in a three-ingredient drink, there’s always room for improvement. Here are our favorites.

“There are lots of really cool tequilas, rums and amaro I can’t get,” says Teague. “It’s frustrating, but it also gives me the opportunity to fill the menu with other things, like readily available local products.”

Huckleberry’s menu pairs nostalgic flavors (there are drinks channeling cherry Coke and Welch’s grape juice, for example) with modern cocktail chemistry, putting to use some of the knowledge Teague gained during a stage under legendary cocktail scientist Dave Arnold last year. I asked Teague to walk me through the bottles that best define the bar. Here are five spirits he’s tapping at Huckleberry.

As the story goes, during the French Revolution, the monastery was destroyed and the recipe presumably lost along with it—until, a century later, in 1863, when wealthy wine merchant Alexandre Le Grand is said to have discovered it in an old book. He then claimed to recreate the recipe—a secret blend of 27 herbs and spices, including angelica, saffron and juniper—and marketed his liqueur, Bénédictine, as a recreational beverage. 

In the years since, the liqueur’s popularity has ebbed and flowed, making appearances in classic drinks like the Vieux Carré, the Creole Cocktail and the once-ubiquitous B&B, a simple mixture of brandy and Bénédictine that first appeared in the 1930s at New York’s “21” Club. While far from mainstream today, Bénédictine is finding a more permanent place in the modern bartender’s arsenal thanks to its versatility. The honey, spice and green tea notes make it a good pair for brown spirits, while the herbal flavor accents refreshing drinks like a Daiquiri or Tom Collins.

Want to get started with the liqueur? Here are some of our favorite recipes made with Bénédictine.

I was three hours deep into Season 4 of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, sprawled out on my couch, laptop balanced on my thighs.

It was supposed to be a ten-minute break from studying the growing regions of Italy for my upcoming Wine & Spirit Education exam. On screen, Whitney Rose and Angie Katsanevas had barely settled into their seats at “Emigration,” which, despite the name, features a largely American menu, when Whitney turned to Angie and asked, “Have you ever had the Justin Cabernet?” I nearly choked on my tea. She couldn’t possibly be recommending the Justin Cabernet Sauvignon that you can get at Walgreens for $22—whose branding is reminiscent of the men’s body wash two aisles over—to a woman who, minutes prior, emerged from a white Porsche 911 with her husband, a $7,000 Cartier bracelet glittering on his wrist.

When there is no limit to what your money can buy, what do you buy? This is the driving question that has made the Real Housewives franchise so popular since it first premiered in 2006. After nineteen seasons across twelve international cities, these women and their purchasing habits offer a fascinating window into how the 0.1 percent view pleasure. It’s hard to watch without wondering what life is like in their Jimmy Choos. If I had endless capital, how would I spend it? 

After years of working in Michelin-starred kitchens and wineries, whenever I have money to burn, which is admittedly less frequent than I’d like, I spend it on the ephemeral: going out to lavish dinners at fine-dining restaurants where I order multiple bottles of wine for my dining partner and myself, waxing poetic about the growing region or grape while their eyes glaze over. If I had endless capital, I would eat and drink it. And yet, I sat there watching these women electing to drink a bottle of wine I used to get hammered on when I was a broke college student—paired with a pale chicken breast atop a wilted pile of equally beige cauliflower.

I first started watching The Real Housewives of New York after an injury that confined me to the hospital and then my couch for weeks. I lived vicariously through them, getting parasocially invested in their drama for hours on end.

I’ve never been much into fashion or glam, the hallmarks of the franchise and fandom, but I’m a certified wine specialist and the Housewives love to drink. Once I started to notice the bottles gracing their dinner tables, ladies luncheons, fashion shows and art openings, I couldn’t stop pausing the screen, trying to make out the label. Whitney’s Justin order initially seemed out of place given its relatively unluxurious price point, but it fits into the broader landscape of the Housewives’ taste in wine. Almost all of the wines they consume are mass-market, often domestic with large distributors around the country. Across franchises and spinoff shows, at group dinners that descend into brawls, the Housewives gravitate toward high-alcohol, high-sugar cabernet sauvignon, usually from California. Even when they stray from that category, they lean sweet. Mary Cosby from The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City espoused the virtues of the 2003 Dom Pérignon vintage to her guests while hosting a Met Gala–themed lunch, where the valet dressed as a beefeater and the ladies entered on a red carpet:

“In 2003 it was a heatwave; 5,600 people died and it made the best grapes of all time,” she said. The women nodded, slack-jawed. By “best” Mary means sweetest, since the heatwave ripened the grapes past their normal picking point, lessening the natural acidity of the grapes and concentrating the fruit’s sugars.

I’ve always found this criteria to be a little too vague. I was not asked this question, but if I were, my honest answer wouldn’t be a list of cool bars that I’d necessarily want to broadcast. There’d be an assemblage of just-fine dives and spots conveniently located near my and my friends’ apartments. “Experience” is subjective and tied to so many factors outside of a bar’s control. Writing for Eater’s newsletter Kangtown, Esther Tseng connected the dots this year about why so few Los Angeles bars are recognized, attributing it to the city’s sprawl, compared to places like New York (the only American city represented this year), where you can pretty easily walk between each of the four bars that made the cut. 

Despite the criticisms—of which there have been many—the list is an annual inflection point. What does the industry, on a global scale, value these days? What’s trending among these dialed-in, hospitality-focused spaces? (And cynically, some might ask: Who’s got a good PR team?) We ran the numbers to find out.

Europe has the most bars on the list, with 14 entries. As Pritesh Mody, a UK-based hospitality consultant and the host of the awards ceremony last Wednesday, pointed out, the top three spots this year went to bars on three different continents: Bar Leone in Hong Kong, which returns to the #1 spot; followed by Moebius Milano, in Milan, the same city hosting this year’s event; and Alquímico in Cartagena, Colombia. There are no new countries represented, relative to last year, and there’s a three-way tie between Hong Kong, New York City and Paris for most-awarded city. 

As in the past, there are no African bars on the list, though the ceremony made a point to highlight a “destination award,” created last year, honoring the best bar in the continent. Mody said it was established to “shine a spotlight on an even wider range of bars across the world,” and announced Front/Back in Accra, Ghana as the winner.

About one-quarter of the bars on the list are new (fewer than last year’s returning 40 percent). The Bar in Front of the Bar in Athens won the “highest climber” award, moving up 28 places from last year to take the #19 spot. Other big moves: Bar Benfiddich in Tokyo and Caretaker’s Cottage in Melbourne fell 26 places, while New York City’s Sip & Guzzle rose by 25 places. Generally, movement was less dramatic than last year, which saw one bar fall 37 places.

I was curious how these big moves might coincide with travel trends. The voting body is an international one, but one’s “best experiences” over the past year-and-a-half are obviously affected by where exactly they were. According to Japan Tourism Statistics and the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, travel to both countries declined, year over year. Could Bar Benfiddich and Caretaker’s Cottage’s falls be attributed to, simply, fewer voters going there? (By contrast, in New York, where foreign travel is down, the total number of visitors rose slightly.) It’s impossible, obviously, to tell, but it’s a good reminder that these are extremely subjective rankings.

Anecdotally, people attribute awards buzz to newness. But how much truth is there to that assumption? Thirty bars on the list opened in the 2020s, and six were opened just last year. Bar Carmen and Connaught Bar are the oldest bars on the list, opened in 2008. The newest bars on the list, Victor Audio Bar and Waltz, were opened in May 2025.

We also considered the size of bars’ social media followings. We looked at every bar’s Instagram accounts (barring Connaught Bar and Bar Carmen, who share their accounts with their associated hotel and restaurant respectively), and the average number of followers was around 55,235. This is, of course, a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg situation; bars that have won awards in the past would of course gain more of a following.

We’ve heard that these awards seem to prioritize bars who retain PR teams. I decided to fact check this: Only about half of the bars that made the list have ever reached out to me, via representative or otherwise, and we’ve covered about a third of the list on Punch. If you’re an ambitious bar doing something cool (especially outside of the United States), please do reach out to me! I’d love to hear from more of you.

Sustainability: If you read the Punch newsletter (subscribe here!), you’ll know that my initial reaction was that while there were nods—like a Sustainable Bar Award, which went to Line in Athens, and shout outs to sustainable bars like De Vie—there isn’t as much of a focus on sustainability this year as in past years. 

I asked the De Vie team if they felt this shift, too. Co-founder Alex Francis says it’s more to do with how bars position themselves, rather than any changes to their actual practices. “The bar world [is] maturing, [rather] than simply pivoting away from sustainability,” he says. While bars and the big awards may spend less air time talking about upcycling ingredients, or using certain ice, he feels that there’s still “a bigger conversation about how bars can reduce their impact on the world,” including community initiatives that go beyond the environment, taking place. 

A flattening of taste? The continued dominance of Bar Leone (#1), a spot that focuses on crowd-pleasing, easy-to-replicate drinks, is a welcome surprise at a time when many of the top spots skew high-tech and high-concept. (I like an extremely engineered cocktail sometimes, but I also want the places keeping it classic to get their flowers.) The win, however, did make me take a closer look at the bar’s local peers. Consider the four Hong Kong bars recognized this year: Bar Leone is an Italian bar; Argo (#25) is a hotel bar in the Four Seasons; Montana (#36) channels Cuba’s golden age; and Gokan (#41) is a Japanese bar. Perhaps these reflect local tastes and trends, not just global ones. But it feels like a lot of the bars, especially outside of the U.S. and Europe, that reach this global stage cater to tourists. In the future, I’d love to see more local flavors and techniques take center-stage. 

Tlecān (#47), a bar spotlighting pre-Hispanic Mexican culture, has always interested me in this way. As Eli Martinez Bello told Punch contributor Ximena N. Beltran Quan Kiu:  “I got into mixology to tell stories. Then I realized, there’s so much that’s already happened, things we can’t forget. So rather than inventing new [stories], I made this about going deep into Mexico’s history and culture, and bringing it to people here and now through drinks.”  

Disclosure: Some Punch contributors are part of the voting body for the 50 Best Bar awards.

For years, Gen Z has been pigeonholed as the inside generation. Allegedly, Gen Z is lonely; Gen Z doesn’t dance or party or go to bars. I, a 24-year-old living in Brooklyn, have been sent to a “Fight Your Evil Situationship Boxing Rave” to see if this is what we do instead.

Walking upstairs into a cavernous, smoky room filled with my peers—clad in all haircuts and jean leg widths—I felt the bass before I saw the ring. I don’t know what I was expecting when I first came across the flyer for the event, which sought “fighters that will bring a slight horniness,” but it wasn’t an actual boxing ring. There it was, though, with ropes and strobe lights delineating the edges, and a DJ booth behind it. That was the least of the surprises of the night. 

Grownkid, the host of this event, is a “social club for 18- to 24-year-olds” started by Gael Aitor and Kayla Suarez. This is not the duo’s first foray into fight-centric partying; for Valentine’s Day this year, they held a wrestling speed dating night. And this very physical means of closeness—from modern medieval combat to lesbian oil wrestling to the (now mainstream, or at least corporatized) Twinks vs. Dolls showdown—has also been on the rise. In the same city, on the same weekend, Migo Events scheduled its Lucha Libre, promising freestyle wrestling and mariscos at a skate park.

But at least one legacy, thank god, remains: The SoCal Beach Dive Bar. You know them when you see them. In Southern California, stretching from Imperial Beach and the Tijuana border on the south end, up to somewhere in Santa Barbara County (the northern dividing line is not official), coastal towns are littered with them: the kinds of breezy bars filled with flip-flop degenerates of all economic standings, knocking back pitchers of domestic beer and perhaps a flattop-griddled cheese burger with a side of potato chips. These salty saloons—some dating back to the early 1900s—are not necessarily on the beach. Thanks to consistently escalating land values, the best of these bars are often within smelling distance of the sea, but a few minutes’ walk from those pricier shores. You can feel the beach in these places, even if you can’t see it. These old briny watering holes are for people who want to be near the ocean, even if they haven’t stepped into it for months or maybe a decade.

Here is how you know you’re in a SoCal Beach Dive Bar: The decor is often tiki-adjacent (the tiki bar was invented in Hollywood, by the way), or nautical in nature. Sometimes, like at The Harbor Room in Playa del Rey, or The Galley in Santa Monica, it might feel like you’re drinking in the belly of an old wooden ship. Old wood is a plus, so are places without credit card machines (though these are getting more and more rare).

There is more than one way to caffeinate your cocktail. Here are our favorites.

For the most potent dose of fresh coffee flavor, turn to espresso. The Espresso Martini is an obvious choice to feature the brew; while modern recipes call for cold brew or flavored liqueur, all three of our favorite recipes in a tasting of several versions stuck with espresso. 

For the easiest espresso-plus-booze combinations, turn to the caffeinated cocktails of history. There’s the Mexico City party drink that hails from the 19th century, the carajillo, made by pouring espresso and the Licor 43 over ice. And even before that, there was the 17th-century protococktail from Italy, Livorno Punch, a steamy combination of espresso, spiced rum, sugar and a lemon twist.