For years, India learnt to speak the language of cocktails by looking elsewhere. The classics were studied, techniques were borrowed, international bars became reference points and the hotel bar remained the most familiar home for a well-made drink.
Then something shifted. The country began looking inward for inspiration. Local ingredients, regional memories, indigenous spirits and distinctly Indian forms of hospitality started finding their way behind the bar. The question was no longer simply whether Indian bartenders could meet a global standard, but what they could create that felt unmistakably their own.
The Asia’s 50 Best Bars list offers one way of tracing that change. India’s presence has evolved considerably over the years, from Mumbai’s AER at No. 37 in 2017 to Delhi’s Sidecar breaking into the Top 20 in 2021. In 2022, India had five bars on the list, including Goa’s Tesouro at No. 4, followed by four Indian bars in 2023, led by Delhi’s Sidecar at No. 18. The representation dipped to a single bar in 2024, before five Indian bars returned to the Top 50 in 2025, including Soka, Boilermaker and Bar Spirit Forward.
In 2026, the significance was not in the number of Indian bars on the list, but in how high they climbed. The three bars that had featured in the Top 50 in 2025 all moved up the rankings. Goa’s Boilermaker surged from No. 30 to No. 8 and was named India’s Best Bar, while Bengaluru’s Soka rose from No. 28 to No. 18 and Bar Spirit Forward climbed from No. 37 to No. 30. For the first time, three Indian bars that had featured in the previous year’s Top 50 finished inside Asia’s Top 30.
The rankings capture the rise, but they don’t quite explain it. Behind those numbers is a more significant shift: India’s leading bars are no longer looking outward for a template to follow. They are drawing from the places they inhabit, the memories they carry, local ingredients and traditions. They are creating cocktails that could only have come from here.
When India Started Looking Beyond The Hotel Bar
When Yangdup Lama began working in the industry more than two decades ago, cocktails were largely confined to hotel bars. The idea of walking into a standalone bar specifically for a well-made drink barely existed.
The emergence of independent bars changed that. “It gave bartenders the freedom to build menus around ideas rather than follow what had always been done,” says Lama, co-founder of Bar Stormy, Cocktails & Dreams Speakeasy, Sidecar, The Brook, The Old House and India Bartender Show.
Then came education. Competitions, international exchanges, travel and greater access to global cocktail culture exposed Indian bartenders to techniques, ingredients and conversations from across the world.
That exposure mattered. But eventually, learning had to become expression.
Lama sees that as one of the biggest changes of the past decade. Indian bartenders are no longer simply absorbing international influences and reproducing them. They are interpreting them through an Indian lens, drawing on local ingredients, memories and stories and building bars that could only exist here.
Priyanka Blah, founder of The Dram Attic, co-founder and editorial director of DRIP and Academy Chair for 50 Best Bars, sees the shift from a wider industry perspective. Increased inbound and outbound travel, social media, brand investment and a growing food and beverage market have all expanded the industry’s exposure and visibility.
The talent, in other words, did not suddenly appear. The ecosystem that allowed it to be seen did.
The Question Changed
For years, the benchmark was whether an Indian bartender could make the same cocktail, to the same standard, as a bartender anywhere else. Now, the question is different.
“Earlier, we were trying to prove we could make the same drinks as the rest of the world. Today, we’re asking a much better question. What can only India offer?” says Pankaj Balachandran, co-founder of Boilermaker.
At Boilermaker, the answer begins with Goa. The bar was built specifically for Siolim rather than being a concept that could simply be transplanted elsewhere. Its drinks draw from the landscape around it: kokum, cashew apple, toddy vinegar, feni and GI-tagged Moira bananas.
Its Golden Ticket brings together Moira banana, cacao and Dukshiri feni. It is deliberately approachable rather than aggressively regional, which is precisely why Balachandran believes it works as an introduction to Goa.
“The story always comes before the recipe,” he says, describing conversations with farmers, producers and locals as part of the creative process.
At Bengaluru’s Soka, the shift is expressed through memory. Co-founder Avinash Kapoli sees the city not simply as a source of ingredients but of smells, neighbourhoods, everyday characters and personal references. The bar’s SOKA x Vasane project, created with artist Indu Antony, translated Bengaluru’s parks, petrichor and marketplaces into scent and then into cocktails. “Eventually you reach a point where learning from the world has to turn into finding your own voice,” Kapoli says.
Blah sees the same confidence reflected across India’s strongest bars. They are rarely victims of trends and fads, she says. Instead, “they forge their own path and that’s what makes them stand out – they proudly own their identity.”
Three very different bars, then, are pointing towards the same idea: global recognition is increasingly following originality rather than imitation.
Beyond The Indian Ingredient
There is, however, a misconception that comes with the conversation around Indian cocktail identity: that a drink becomes Indian simply by adding an Indian ingredient. The bars themselves are pushing back against this idea.
At Boilermaker, Balachandran says simply adding feni does not automatically make a cocktail Goan. At Soka, Kapoli argues that “as Indian bartenders become more confident, the less we need to perform Indianness.”
Soka’s Mysore Boy, built around sandalwood, whisky and a particular memory, does not announce itself as an “Indian cocktail”. Its identity comes from the reference that inspired it rather than a checklist of ingredients.
Bar Spirit Forward founder Arijit Bose takes the argument further. “An ingredient is an ingredient whether Indian or international, common or rare,” he says. What matters is knowing how to use it and make it fit the drink, rather than chasing whatever happens to be trending.
The same thinking extends to Indian spirits.
Anand Virmani, co-founder and master distiller of Nao Spirits & Beverages, believes one of the biggest misconceptions is that Indian spirits must necessarily have an “Indian flavour” – that being Indian means tasting spicy, aromatic or reminiscent of Indian food. “It is not about creating an Indian flavour. Bartenders were already doing that,” he says.
What Indian craft spirits have helped create, Virmani argues, is a stronger relationship between bartenders and the people making the spirits. When Nao developed Hapusa, bartenders were involved even before the product reached consumers, tasting the spirit, giving feedback and helping determine what worked.
Pistola’s Chief Operating Officer Kimberly Pereira sees the same confidence emerging across the premium spirits landscape. Bartenders, she says, are increasingly willing to ask whether an Indian spirit can be the best ingredient in the glass and judge it “on the liquid rather than its passport.”
Perhaps India’s cocktail identity is not a flavour profile at all. It is a point of view.
A More Curious Drinker
The transformation isn’t happening only behind the bar. The Indian drinker has changed too. “We are moving from drinking by category to drinking by curiosity,” Pereira says.
Whisky and rum may remain foundational to India’s drinking culture, but travel, social media and greater exposure to international bars have made consumers more willing to explore unfamiliar spirits, ingredients and techniques. The question is increasingly not simply what is being poured, but where it comes from, why it tastes the way it does and what makes it worth trying.
Kapoli has seen the same shift at Soka. He says, “A technically perfect cocktail is almost the starting expectation now. What makes someone remember a bar is whether they felt understood, whether they discovered something new and whether they felt comfortable enough to ask questions.”
That may explain why hospitality repeatedly surfaces when India’s best bars talk about what makes them special.
At Spirit Forward, the emphasis is less on theatrics than on creating a convivial place where people can come, drink and spend time. Hours of preparation happen behind the scenes, but the purpose is ultimately consistency, and giving bartenders more time to engage with guests.
Lama agrees. “You can make the most technically brilliant cocktail in the world, but if the guest doesn’t feel welcome, you’ve missed the point entirely.”
For Blah, that combination of world-class service and the warmth of Indian hospitality is one of the defining strengths of the country’s best bars.
The drinks may be getting more sophisticated. The experience, importantly, does not have to become more intimidating.
The Ecosystem Behind The Glass
What is happening in India’s bars cannot be separated from what is happening around them. Indian craft spirits, bartenders, consumers, producers, educators and international exposure have begun feeding into one another.
Virmani describes it as “a self-sustaining system where everyone helps each other grow.” Indian bartenders were among the first to put Indian spirits on their menus, often before those spirits had received international validation. As Indian spirits began earning recognition overseas and Indian bars started climbing global lists, the relationship became a source of shared confidence.
For Balachandran, the next chapter should be defined less by rankings and more by the strength of this ecosystem: deeper relationships with farmers and producers, greater investment in education, sustainable careers and stronger neighbourhood bars.
Lama agrees that the industry still needs more mentorship, education and opportunities beyond a handful of cities. “Great cocktail cultures are built by communities,” he says.
That is perhaps the most important caveat to India’s current moment. Three bars inside Asia’s Top 30 is a milestone. It is not yet proof that India has become one of the world’s dominant cocktail destinations.
Bose calls the journey “a work in process and still a long way to go.”
But the distance travelled is difficult to ignore.
The Next Chapter Belongs To India’s Own Voice
The sense of unfinished business makes India’s showing in 2026 more interesting, not less.
The country has spent years mastering the classics, absorbing global techniques and understanding what excellence behind a bar looks like. The next stage is not about proving that it can replicate those standards. It is about having the confidence to apply them to its own point of view.
Blah describes the future she wants to see as a cocktail culture that “looks inward for inspiration and outward for learning.” The learning has already happened in many ways; what is changing is what Indian bartenders choose to do with it.
Boilermaker begins with Goa. Soka begins with Bengaluru. Spirit Forward begins with the simple idea that a great bar should be somewhere people want to return to. Around them, Indian spirits are finding their own place, consumers are becoming more curious and bartenders are becoming increasingly confident in their own references.
Perhaps that is the real significance of India’s rise on Asia’s 50 Best Bars list. Not that India has finally learnt how to make cocktails that can stand alongside the world’s best but that it is increasingly confident enough to make them on its own terms.
There may never be one definitive Indian cocktail. There may be hundreds – shaped by different cities, memories, ingredients, communities and histories.
And that may be the most compelling identity India can offer: not a single flavour, but a distinct point of view – one that no longer needs to imitate anyone else to be recognised.