By Kate Dingwall
No matter how you drink your tequila — sipped, in a shot, with a side of fried chapulines, or stirred into a Oaxacan Old Fashioned — there are plenty of great places in the country to do it in. And not all offer the same salt-rimmed margaritas and standard bottle offerings. One serves vintage bottles from since-passed mezcaleros; another organizes bottles by agave type, allowing drinkers to compare and contrast different species. Others make creative cocktails that let mezcal, bacanora, raicilla, or pechuga shine. There are high-fi bars for drinking many, many margaritas and dim and divey cantinas with stellar selections of rare mezcals. One commonality: all of the following bars are very fun places to enjoy tequila. Thirsty? We thought so. Here are the best places to drink tequila in the United States.
Adiõs (Birmingham, Alabama)
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By Mexico City standards, this is a great bar. Tropical plants fill the space, the cocktail list is full of unique agave cocktails, and the walls are covered in antique Mexican stained glass and prints from Arch.Oax, a Oaxaca-based mixed media artist. But the thing is, this Mexican accented bar isn’t in Mexico at all: it’s in Alabama. Mexican-born owners José Medina Camacho and Jesús Méndez managed to transplant the music and energy of the Mexican capital into this Birmingham tequila lounge. Vibes are transportive, the bottle list is long and the cocktails are creative, like the Miel de Maguey, a tequila-based martini riff, or a mule spiked with tajin and chamoy.