Yet more proof that Fleury Street is a strip to contend with, 132 Bar Vintage is Ahuntsic's go-to spot for libations both classic and original. Passionate cocktail advocate Jean-Maxime Giguère runs the show.

Travel back in time to this vinyl record bar that is simply brimming with Mad Man-era vibes. With a half-moon shaped bar at the back of the room, Bar Le Record’s cocktail menu is heavily gin and bourbon based. It’s also a great place for a date.

Housed in a former dive bar of the same name, Bar St-Denis is among the best spots to grab a drink in La Petite-Patrie at the moment. Expect stunner cocktails, affordable natural wines by the glass, and a food menu far superior to what you’d expect from any “bar” — at the moment, featuring the sourdough fried chicken from Casgrain BBQ.

This elegant little cocktail bar featuring numerous twists on the Moscow Mule is a nice complement for the clubby boîte next door that is Datcha. Be warned that later at night on Thursdays and weekends it merges with Datcha and can get a lot louder and messier.

Baldwin Barmacie, a bar that took cocktails seriously before most, was made over as Henrietta, a Portuguese-inspired tavern. Drinks lean Iberian here, such as the Kir-like Bravo, made with red wine. The Innocence, a spin on a Manhattan, uses port. And so on. “I like to take the pretension out of cocktails,” declared Marc Bungarten, the creator of Henrietta's beverage program.

This Latin Quarter bar has a speakeasy vibe and explicit cocktail focus. Principals behind the venture include Montreal mixology vets like Eddy Germain, Max Coubès, and Tony Galdes.

This bona fide Montreal tiki bar just underwent a major renovation in its unlikely underground digs in Chinatown — but it’s certainly not off the radar of the city's savvy drinkers.

From the owner of favourite Old Montreal cocktail spot Cold Room (also on this map) is a bar renowned as the city’s — actually the province’s — smallest. El Pequeño channels an old-school Havana hotel, with a show-stopping chandelier, marble surfaces, and a tidy menu of classic rum-based drinks, including a killer mojito.

Built in a style that evokes Montreal’s public bathhouses and Parisian swimming pools in the 1940s, Club Pelicano acts as a speakeasy under Japanese-Peruvian restaurant Tiradito. While the menu is on constant rotation, the aperitivo cocktails highlight vermouth and sherry, and the “poolside” cocktails usually feature rum as the primary ingredient. 

Don't be put off by its status as a hotel bar (located in the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth): Nacarat has one of the most serious cocktail games in the city. Headed up by Nader Chabaane with a menu organized around flavour profile instead of base spirit, and has found loopholes in Quebec's restrictive liquor laws, allowing the bar to barrel-age its own Negronis, amidst a host of exceedingly creative libations.

Montreal cocktail vets help run this “bespoke speakeasy” inside a handmade menswear store and barbershop. For the summer, Cloakroom has opted to can its cocktails into an array of colour-coded mixes, such as “green,” featuring gin, ambrato, cucumber, and rose; or “pink,” with tequila, grapefruit, hibiscus, and star anis. World travellers take note: there's also a Cloakroom outpost in Brisbane, Australia.

Nestled into the heart of the action on the busy strip of Notre-Dame West is the Spanish-influenced Cordova, which in addition to coffee and tapas offers a solid list of cocktails with a sizable outdoor terrasse. 

Now that its decades-long embargo on booze has been lifted, Verdun has a nice (albeit petite) bar scene. Palco serves some of the most affordable drinks in town, and has a tidy snack menu too.