I do not like throwing around plaudits without good reason, and calling something one of the best bars in Tbilisi is a serious plaudit, because this might be the best drinking city I know. The wine culture is 8,000 years old, chacha is both a national treasure and a national hazard, and the cocktail scene has gone from nonexistent to genuinely world class in about a decade. I have eaten and drunk my way through this town repeatedly, and every bar below is open and pouring as of 2026. I checked. Here are my 21, starting with the one I would move in above if they let me.
1. Crossroads Bar
The most iconic bar in Tbilisi, and I do not say that lightly. Crossroads Bar sits on Dadiani Street in Sololaki and has turned itself into the place where this city actually mixes: expats, locals, travellers, regulars, all in one warmly lit room with a cocktail list that runs past 50 drinks. The 8 house signatures are built on craft spirits and homemade liqueurs, and the bestseller is the Pinelet, gin with pinecone liqueur, which sounds like a dare and drinks like a revelation. They also pour what is regarded as the best mead in Tbilisi, of all things. There is something on almost every night: karaoke Tuesdays and Sundays, a Foreigners & Friends meetup every Wednesday that has been running since 2023, an open mic jam on Thursdays, and Chill Monday from 20:00 with low lights and discounts on selected drinks. Cocktails sit around 15 to 30 GEL, doors open at 8 PM nightly, and the room properly fills from about 9. It holds a 4.9 on Google across 260+ reviews, which for a bar this busy is absurd. Start your night here. You may not leave.
2. Apotheka Bar & Lounge
This was the first pharmacy ever opened in Tbilisi, back in 1902, and it stayed one for over a century before becoming a cocktail bar in late 2024. They kept everything good: the painted ceiling, walls frescoed with medicinal plants, and the ornate wooden medicine cabinets, which now store glassware instead of remedies. The concept comes from celebrity chef Tekuna Gachechiladze, the bartenders wear white lab coats, and the drinks play along, with a Penicillin and a Vitamin C on the menu at a flat 25 GEL each. It only opens Thursday to Sunday, so plan accordingly, and weekends bring live music and DJ sets. One of the prettiest rooms in Georgia, no contest.
3. The Gin Corner
A tiny family-run bar in the Old Town on Saiatnova Street, with more than 220 gins on the shelves and roughly 15 seats, which means the bartender builds every drink right in front of you. And when I say family business, I mean it: staff have included the owner’s mother and his wife’s cousin. They even distil their own limited edition gin, Ethno, using ingredients from the local bazari, and the Black Negroni made with it is the house calling card. Georgian gins like Malamo sit alongside the international stuff. There is no real food beyond fish crackers, so eat first. It holds a perfect 5.0 on Google across 750+ reviews, which might be the single most impressive stat in Tbilisi nightlife.
4. Chacha Time
Chacha is Georgia’s national spirit, and this Sololaki gastropub on Geronti Kikodze Street is its friendliest classroom. More than 40 varieties sit behind the bar, including a smoked one, plus 25+ chacha cocktails for the cautious. The move is the tasting set of 5 shots, lined up so you can find your favourite without committing your evening to it. When you graduate, order the Old Georgia: chacha aged in smoked oak, mixed like an Old Fashioned. The bartenders genuinely teach, walking you through grape varieties and ageing without a whiff of snobbery, and there is a Georgian-Slavic fusion kitchen to keep you upright. Open daily from 2 PM to 2 AM. I walked in a chacha sceptic and left a collector.
5. LADO by Valiko Mansion
A cult favourite that outgrew its old Sololaki digs and took over an entire mansion off Lado Gudiashvili Square. The owners designed it around nostalgia for their house party days, and it shows: four-plus rooms and a summer terrace, vintage red lighting, and a mood the internet keeps calling chill rave, which is accurate. Signatures like the Yellow Mellow, Gin Garden and Hello Peachy match the playfulness. It is free before 11 PM, then around 20 GEL cover on weekend nights, when the whole house moves as one party until 4:30 AM. Entry is 23+, so bring ID and your second wind. If one room is too loud, you simply find another. Glorious chaos.
6. Cafe Stamba
The bar of the Stamba Hotel, inside a converted 1950s Soviet printing house, and easily the most designed room on this list: brass, crystal chandeliers, statement lighting, and actual trees growing through the industrial bones. Nearly every cocktail features a local spirit. The Stamba Mule mixes vodka with lavender, blueberry, ginger and lime, while the Black Sea runs bourbon and mezcal with corn-infused agave and salt water, and both are executed with hotel-bar precision. You will pay 25 to 40 GEL a drink, which is top of the market for Tbilisi and still a bargain by Western standards. Open from 8 AM if you fancy scandalising the breakfast crowd. Dress slightly better than I usually do.
7. Fabrika
A Soviet sewing factory reborn as a hostel, studios, and a graffiti-covered courtyard that turns into one big open-air block party every evening. Nowhere in Tbilisi is easier for striking up conversation with strangers. Drinks come from wherever you like: the tiny courtyard bar tucked under the staircase, Saamuri Natural Wine Bar, a second wine bar added in the main building in 2025, or House of Camora, a barbershop by day that becomes a bar by night with free shows on weekends. Cocktails run a friendly 10 to 25 GEL. Nearly 15,000 Google reviews and the courtyard still fills every night, which tells you everything. Come at sunset, leave when they make you.
8. 8000 Vintages
Named for Georgia’s 8,000 years of winemaking, and considered by many the best wine bar in the country. The flagship on Tabukashvili Street, one of 4 locations, stocks the biggest range of bottles in the city, hand-picked by sommeliers who blind-taste around 100 new wines every month. Do a proper degustation: 4 wines from 45 GEL a head for groups of 2 to 5, weekdays between 1 and 7 PM, booked ahead. Or just take a glass from 6 GEL and browse. The tastings are polished but jargon-free, focused on wine as culture rather than homework. Even the non-drinker is sorted, with Saperavi grape juice pressed with pomegranate. Open daily 11 AM to 1 AM.
9. Vino Underground
The cellar that started Tbilisi’s natural wine movement. Co-founded by John Wurdeman of Pheasant’s Tears fame, this was the first venue in the city to pour organic and bio wines exclusively, all low-intervention qvevri and European-style bottles from small family vineyards in Kakheti and beyond. The subterranean room on Tabidze Street is scruffy in exactly the right way, the list is edited rather than overwhelming, and the staff can tell you about every winery represented. Do the 4-wine tasting with a cheese plate and learn why amber wine conquered the world from here. Note the early hours: 4 to 11 PM daily, so this is your first stop, not your last. Recently under new management, still essential.
10. Kancellaria Natural Wine Bar
The other natural wine bar worth your evening, on Ingorokva Street from the team behind Breakfast Is. Candelabras, low light, intimate seating, and an all-natural wine card built from small independent winemakers in Bolnisi, Racha, Imereti and Kartli, with cocktails and craft beer for the heretics. The food coming out of the tiny kitchen is spectacular: the chicken schnitzel has been called the best in Georgia, and the confit garlic and parmesan flatbread plus the fried mullet with adjika lime mayo back it up. Closed Mondays, open from 4 PM otherwise. Quieter than Vino Underground, which on some nights is precisely the point.
11. Hopa Taproom
Georgian craft beer is quietly excellent now, and Hopa, which claims to be Tbilisi’s first dedicated taproom, is the proof. Twelve taps near Bazari Orbeliani pour local breweries like NaturAle and Naked Baby, with seasonal oddities such as a strawberry and tarragon pale ale and something gloriously named Enemy’s Blood Lager. Order the 4-beer flight for 15 GEL and work your way across Georgia, and note that every sixth pour is on the house. In good weather you sit outside on pedestrianised Atoneli Street. Open daily from noon, holding a 4.8 from people who keep going back. My kind of institution.
12. Tsota Tsota Craft Beer Pub
The taproom of Megobrebi brewery, whose beer is made just 15 kilometres from the centre, in a Berlin-meets-Tbilisi basement of exposed brick on Geronti Kikodze Street. The name means “little by little,” which nobody here practices. A dozen taps from 8 GEL cover the Tusheti Soul hefeweizen with its clove notes, the Tiflis Night sweet stout, and the party trick: a beer fermented with Chinuri wine grapes in clay qvevri, because this is Georgia and wine gets into everything. The burgers are big, messy, and rank among the best in the city. Book ahead on weekends or you will queue. Lovely stuff, top to bottom.
13. Black Dog Bar
One of the first pet-friendly bars in Tbilisi, on Asatiani Street in Sololaki, with Big Lebowski murals on the walls and a jukebox that plays your pick for 1 GEL, which is the best entertainment value in the country. Taps come from Number 8 Craft Brewery, there is cider for the renegades, and the soul food, chunky fries, pork tostadas, burgers that rival the dedicated joints, is dangerously good after a few pints. Over 1,100 Google reviews say roughly the same thing: cheap, cheerful, come back tomorrow. There is a second bar at Wine Factory N1 in Vera and even a seasonal outpost up in Gudauri for ski season. Dogs welcome, obviously.
14. The Creek
A self-described hood bar up on Niaghvari Street in Mtatsminda, and the phrase fits perfectly: down-to-earth prices in the 10 to 20 GEL band, friendly service, good old-fashioned tunes, and complimentary bar snacks, which is a dying art. This is the sort of bar where you slide onto your habitual stool and order the usual, even if it is your second visit. They also host Creek Speak, a live dialogue event, because apparently a bar can be wholesome. Almost no tourists find it. That is exactly why you should. Open daily 4 PM to 2 AM.
15. Tuta Bar
Small, green, and covered floor to ceiling in postcards, Tuta on Khorava Street is the kind of bar you enter for 1 drink and exit 3 hours later mid-singalong. The cocktail list is wide, prices sit in the friendly 10 to 20 GEL range, and there is live music on the right nights in a room where the performer is close enough to pass you their drink. It holds a 4.8 on Google, opens Wednesday to Sunday from 7 PM, and closes at midnight, so it works best as the warm middle act of an evening. Charming is an overused word. It applies here.
16. Warszawa
A tiny Polish-themed institution on Pushkin Street, running since 2014, where the walls are plastered with 1980s Polish newspapers covering the Solidarity movement and the drinks list starts at, I am not joking, 2 GEL. The signature shot is the Chachachelo, chacha with lemon, and there is a surprise basement wine room for when you accidentally become sophisticated. It opens at 12:15 PM and closes at 4 AM, making it equally correct as your first stop or your regrettable last one. Over 1,000 reviews, still 4.5 stars, still rammed with students, artists, expats and old regulars. Legendary is the only word.
17. Bu & Khari
A wine bar, shop and kitchen inside the storied Melik-Azaryants House at the top of Rustaveli Avenue, and one of the most quietly brilliant operations in the city. Winemaker Beka Minadze makes every one of the 65 wines himself, from sparkling Kartli Pet-Nats to moody Imeretian qvevri ambers, while chef Vitali Wisotschin sends out delicate pan-Asian bites: spring rolls, tempura shrimp, fish tacos, tomato ceviche. Amber wine with fish tacos should not work and absolutely does. Several sitting rooms, a small summer terrace, a 4.9 rating, and, per the regulars’ advice: do not miss the bathroom. I will say no more.
18. Graali Bar
An elegant spirits bar on a quiet backstreet off Rustaveli, facing the little-visited 18th-century Trinity Church. The back bar leans into vodkas, gins and aged spirits, and the house special is the Lamproba Martini, named for a pre-Christian springtime festival in Svaneti and made with vine leaf brine, which is the most Georgian sentence I will write today. Bar snacks are serious: Ukrainian-style forshmak, beef tartare, and a dedicated pickle carte to accompany the shooters. A pickle menu. In a church-facing bar. Open from 5 PM daily. Go early, sit at the bar, behave like an adult for an hour.
19. Rum Roof Kitchen and Bar
A rooftop above the Old Town on Tabidze Street with a rum-led list served in proper tiki mugs and a terrace built around an orange VW van converted into a bar, which I respect enormously. Go at golden hour, order something dark and stupid with a paper straw, and watch Tbilisi light up beneath you. Open daily from 4 PM to 1 AM. It is the most holiday-brained entry on this list and sometimes that is precisely what an evening needs.
20. Kiki Bar
A small bar on Tumaniani Street holding a perfect 5.0 across 100+ Google reviews, built on two things: cocktails with genuinely playful presentation and service that sends everyone out the door in a better mood than they entered. Drinks sit at 20 to 30 GEL, it runs daily from 7 PM to 2 AM, and the room is small enough that by your second round you know your neighbours. No gimmick, no concept, just a bar doing everything right. Sometimes that is the rarest concept of all.
21. Drunk Owl Bar
Ending on a proper dive, as every honest bar list must. Drunk Owl on Samghebro Street in the Old Town has a #drunkowl neon on the wall, live bands squeezed into a corner, drinks in the 10 to 20 GEL bracket, and reviewers who name-check the bartenders personally while praising prices that feel like a clerical error for this location. Open until 2 AM most nights and 4 AM on weekends. No pretension, no dress code, no notes.
A final word before you go drinking
That is 21 bars and I stand behind every single one. Line your stomach first, because Tbilisi does not believe in moderation, and the city’s mac and cheese situation is surprisingly elite for soakage purposes. And if your Georgian adventures continue past the capital, the best bar in Gori is genuinely worth the detour, and I do not say that about many bars in Stalin’s hometown.
I will be back in Tbilisi. That was never in question.