Some of the World’s Coolest Dive Bars in Honor of Bourbon Heritage Month

September is one of our favorite months of the year because it salutes one of our favorite beverages of all time – BOURBON!

On August 2, 2007, the United States Senate declared September as “National Bourbon Heritage Month” reinforcing a 1964 Act of Congress that declared bourbon as America’s “Native Spirit”. The bill was passed in the Senate by unanimous consent. Which goes to show that the really important things in life do cross party lines and political ideologies!

Now, in our blog post of August 29, 2022, we saluted bourbon heritage month and offered a variety of ways to cure a hangover, so we didn’t want to do that again. Instead, today we’re going to offer a salute to some of the world’s coolest dive bars in honor of bourbon heritage month.

The drinks at these spots may be good - great, even - but we all know that booze is only half the fun of a really cool dive bar. Whether the staff are slinging mai tais, absinthe, or dirt-cheap whiskey, we’re there for the history, the tall tales, and the quirky charm. From a former Klondike Gold Rush brothel to a 200-year-old Swiss tavern where customers drink while literally swinging from the rafters, if the walls in these joints could talk, they’d have serious stories to tell.

Red Onion Saloon – Skagway, Alaska:

Established in 1897 as a bordello for lonely miners, no visit to Skagway is complete without a visit to this historic saloon. The ground floor is a bar and restaurant where you can enjoy the spirit of your choice underneath a rather extensive display of bedpans. And, although the Red Onion’s days of providing additional services are long gone, you can still go up the ‘stairway to heaven’ for a ‘quickie’ tour of the former brothel. Each of the 10 original upstairs ‘entertaining’ rooms had several doors in case a quick exit was necessary.

El Batey – San Juan, Puerto Rico:

It’s said that if Old San Juan was a person, El Batey would be a scar on that person – not pretty, but it has stories to tell. Everyone from Alan Ginsberg (who read poetry here) to the Rolling Stones (who stopped in whenever they were passing through) to Hunter S. Thompson (who spent many an afternoon at the bar) has stopped in for a quaff. With a jukebox that only plays vinyl 45’s from heavy hitters of the 1960’s to the graffiti from hundreds of visitors scrawled over every inch of its walls,

El Batey is an old, rough, genuine, and non-pretentious kind of dive bar.

Tiki-Ti – Los Angeles, California:

The fun seemingly never stops at this legendary third generation family-owned Sunset Boulevard watering hole. It’s founder, Ray Buhen, was a famous bartender to the stars during Hollywood’s Golden Age, serving the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Bette Davis, Clark Gable, John Wayne, and Howard Hughes. In 1961 he opened his own place, the Polynesian-themed Tiki-Ti, serving original drinks such as the Yellow Bird, Laka Nuki, Bonnie & Clyde, and the Missionary’s Downfall. The drinks are strong, the atmosphere is unlike anything else in L.A., and for those who can’t decide what they want, the bar has a wheel that patrons can spin to help them make up their mind.

John Kavanagh aka The Gravediggers – Dublin, Ireland:

This Dublin landmark, built adjacent to a wall of the Glasnevin Cemetery, has been serving ‘spirits’ since 1833. This was a workingman’s pub that originally drew much of their business from funerals, helping to comfort grieving families. And when they dispersed, it was the gravediggers who’d finish off their shifts with a pint. A repeat ‘customer’ was known as “the man in tweed”.

A dapper ghost with a preference for Guinness. Eight generations of Kavanagh’s have been pouring behind the bar since it opened, and it’s won the award for Best Community Pub in Ireland by Irish Hospitality Global.

Ear Inn – Manhattan, New York:

The Ear Inn is NYC’s oldest bar continuously serving alcohol since 1817 and is on the national registrar of historic buildings. The building was constructed around 1770 for James Brown, an African aide to General George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. Brown is said to be depicted as the man rowing at Washington’s knee in the famous painting Crossing the Delaware.

Throughout the course of its long history the building has been a distillery, a brothel, a smugglers den and a speakeasy. It earned the name The Ear in the 1970’s when, in order to give the place a more official title without wading through a sea of paperwork to satisfy the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the owners simply spray painted out the right-half of the “B” on the neon “Bar” sign out front. Thus the Ear Inn was born.

Le Bar Dix – Paris, France:

Le Bar Dix is a wine bar so lacking in frills and steeped in history that it feels just too good to be true. This local dive has been miraculously preserved (in sangria) since 1955. You’d be hard put to find something more ‘real’ than this tiny venue – more of a musty-smelling cave covered with posters and a patina of nicotine. The mustachioed barmen are mostly there to rein in clients whose carousing threatens to compete with the music, and to mop up spillages of the house sangria as the evening wears on. The menu is much as you’d expect. Apart from a few bottled beers and chorizo and cheese sandwiches, you’ll mostly be ordering sangria or sangria.

Two Schmucks – Barcelona, Spain:

This is a five-star dive-bar that truly lives up to its name and more. Embodying the hustler spirit, its owned by bartenders Moe Aljaf and AJ White who met in Oslo and moved to Barcelona together to open their own bricks and mortar joint which they built using recycled materials with their own two hands. How many dive bars can you name that were ranked #11 in 2021 and #7 in 2022 on The World’s 50 Best Bars? A casual place for a low-key quiet drink during the week, on the weekends, the crowd flowed into the street, cocktails in hand. Bad news is it recently closed down. Good news is they’re going on tour to pop up at various bars across the world while they get a new property in Barcelona sorted. Watch out for them at a bar near you!

Pulqueria Las Duelistas, Mexico City:

Pulque is the freshly fermented sap of giant agave. It has a slightly viscous texture and many well-documented nutritional qualities, having about the same potency as beer. Back in the 1880’s they say there was a pulqueria on every block in Mexico City. Today, just a handful remain that exclusively serve fresh pulque. With the graffiti-painted walls and ceilings, metal stools without cushions, ceiling fans, and no A/C the vibe is somewhat chaotic. Not for the shy, as you’ll likely have to squeeze into a communal table. There’s a lot of pride around pulque, and a certain communal aspect to it, so don’t be surprised if someone pours you a taste from his or her plastic pitcher.

Jean Lafitte's Old Absinthe House - New Orleans, Lousiana:

The Old Absinthe House is one of the oldest structures in New Orleans, dating to 1807. Legend suggests that, in 1812, then Major General Andrew Jackson (later a US President) conferred with the pirate, Jean Lafitte, in a secret chamber on the second floor to secure the pirate and his men's help in defeating the British in the Battle of New Orleans. In 1874 the establishment became famous for its cocktail, the Absinthe Frappe, also known as the "green monster", a mixture of absinthe and sugar water. More than 200 years after opening, The Old Absinthe House stands almost exactly as it always did.

Rossotti’s Alpine Inn – Portola Valley, California:

This unique roadside tavern, built in 1852 by a former San Jose mayor, has passed through various owners and names through the years. In the mid-1850’s it became a gambling hall and inn for Mexican-Californian’s displaced by the Mexican-American War. But it was on August 27, 1976, when a Stanford Research Institute van rolled up to the bar that history was made.

The van occupants lugged a computer terminal into the back beer garden and set it down on a picnic table. Hooking the terminal up with cables to the van alongside the bar, Nicki Geannacopulos typed up a message, which was then sent through the packet radio network, to the ARPANET, and then onwards to its final destination, a computer terminal in Boston. This, wrote SRI researcher Don Nielson, was “the first internet transmission.” “While many people trace the Internet’s origins to the ARPANET of the late ’60s, in fact the word ‘internet’ means joining different kinds of individual networks together,” noted the Computer History Museum. So, be sure to stop by this second-longest-established saloon in California for a pint of history that stretches from the Wild West to the World Wide Web.

Oepfelchammer – Zurich, Switzerland:

Located in a building that was originally constructed as a residence for nobles more than 650 years ago, the Oepfelchammer puts a whole new meaning to the term hangover. They host a drinking ritual known as the balkenprobe, or beam challenge. Participants scramble and kick their way up onto a ceiling beam. They then crawl over to an adjacent rafter and hang upside down. A waiter brings over a glass of white wine and the inverted guest then attempts to down the entire glass without spilling it. You get three tries and, if successful, get to add your name to the collection of carvings on the wall.

As we raise our glasses to celebrate Bourbon Heritage Month, let’s also toast to the enduring spirit of dive bars that have weathered the test of time. These establishments are more than just places to grab a drink; they are living relics of history, each with its own unique tales to tell. From the raucous Red Onion Saloon, where lonely miners sought solace, to the gritty charm of El Batey, where literary giants and rock legends once mingled, these dive bars are a testament to power of community, storytelling, and, of course, a good stiff drink.

So, as we savor the rich flavors of bourbon this month, remember, also, to raise a glass to the world’s coolest dive bars. Where the walls echo with the laughter and secrets of generations past, reminding us that in the world of spirits, both liquid and spectral, there’s always a good story to be shared.

Maybe you’ve patronized one of two of these places along the way? We’d love to hear about it, or about your favorite dive bar that didn’t make our list, in the comments below. Or tell us about it in the beverage section in our forums.

And if you’re reading this in the United States, we encourage you visit our friends over at bourbonbanter.com (link in pic below)

where you can enter for the chance to win weekly prizes in their “Bourbon Swag Giveaway”.

Regardless, we intend to celebrate Bourbon Heritage at least 30 times this month. Cheers!

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