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.

Seaview Hotel, John o’ Groats, Caithness

For a dram with a view on home soil, the Seaview Hotel at the most northerly tip of the UK offers more than 130 single malt whiskies, as well as stunning views across the water to the Orkneys. Watch the sunset over the Island of Stroma with a whisky in hand, and you might even see the Northern Lights if you’re lucky.

Whiskey Sky, 644 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago

If you fancy a whisky in the clouds, head to the rooftop of the W Hotel, 33 floors up, where Whiskey Sky has panoramic views over the Windy City and Lake Michigan. The bar is as glamorous as one might expect of a venture of Rande Gerber, also known as Mr Cindy Crawford, decked out in mohair and leather and playing host to DJs spinning house and hip-hop.

Ku De Ta, Jalan Kayu Aya No. 9 , Seminyak, Bali

For the most idyllic location in which to sample a malt or two, it has to be Bali’s hippest beach club, Ku De Ta. The stylish, minimally-designed bar, restaurant and private beach has a reasonably decent list of whiskies, but if the selection is not the most spectacular in the world, the view probably is. Stake your claim on one of the loungers and watch the sun go down on another day in paradise with a wee dram.