It wasn’t that long ago that going for coffee in Bangkok meant a burnt and desultory espresso, drowned in enough syrup to mask the flavour. Fast-forward a few years and we have a cafe scene that puts San Francisco or Seattle to shame. Cocktails once had a regrettable tendency to be frozen and blue. Now, although we’ll defend bucket drinks to the bitter end, Bangkok bars proudly ascend prestigious global lists and cocktail enthusiasts pay pilgrimages to powerhouses like Bar Us and Vesper. The city's food and drink scene is ever-evolving, and the trajectory has been astounding.
2025’s Bangkok Bar Show awards honoured Sathorn’s Mod Kaew with ‘Wine Bar of the Year,’ the first time an award was presented in this category. Because despite all of the changes we’ve seen and loved, wine has remained stubbornly behind the times. But things are changing, and changing fast. Owing to recent legal changes allowing more favourable tax rates on wine, an increasingly savvy drinking public, a new wave of sommeliers that have risen to the challenge of pairing wine with local cuisine, and a few wine bars that have acted as the vanguard of Thailand's wine scene, things are on an upward path – with some stats even ranking Thailand as the world's fastest growing wine market – even as global wine consumption is decreasing.
For years, Thailand's wine scene faced an uphill battle. Crippling taxes, strict alcohol laws, the lack of a native wine tradition and the challenge of pairing with Thai food made it a difficult landscape. As a result, wine remained a luxury, and drinkers understandably stuck to the big, safe names: classified Bordeaux, brand-name Champagnes, and bold reds from heavy hitters like Penfolds. Now local consumers are enthusiastically exploring its wilder side, from lesser-known grapes to minimal-intervention techniques.
'You're getting things on your Discovery feed from Melbourne, from London,’ says Nuttiya 'Lily' Wisootsat, importer of Fin Wines and owner of Must, a bar-and-bottle-shop in Thong Lo. ‘Wine can be so many things.’ Perhaps it's that lack of tradition that is actually a strong point. Rather than being trapped by hidebound Old World rules, Bangkok's wine scene is free to be creative.
Challenges do remain, and one of Lily’s fears is that perhaps things are expanding a bit too quickly, and wine risks becoming just another local fad: 'People are treating [wine] like it's fast fashion… no, wine takes years to grow the vines, to make the actual wine.' And lest we forget the bacon-mania of 2010, or the great pumpkin spice bubble of 2015-2019, trends precipitate backlash, and the last thing we want to see is our hangout spots falling victim to the vicious hype cycle that has consumed countless F&B projects in Bangkok.
However, on the whole, Lily’s outlook is positive – ‘People are interested in being taught the right things.’ While that might sound like a loaded statement, there seems to be a greater desire for education and experience, and the homework involves drinking wine. Wouldn’t that have made high school physics a bit more fun?
To that end here are five of our favourite study halls. Each is part of the new wave of Bangkok wine bars, and each contributes something different to the scene. We admit that this is a pretty subjective list. For example, while we have to congratulate the team at Mod Kaew on their recent victory, and while they do good work, they have been getting glazed hard by the press, and frankly, we think these five offer more unique experiences. Chin chin.
