We have a soft spot for New Orleans, one of the world’s most exciting cities. With every visit there, we find new places to enjoy wine and cocktails.
Here are some of those New Orleans spots you might want check out, over Super Bowl weekend and beyond:
Wines
Bacchanal Wine. A well-established mainstay of the Bywater neighborhood, this wine shop with a great backyard is your best bet for having excellent wine and catching some live music. You can purchase bottles as well as cheeses and charcuterie inside, then find a space outside to settle in for hours of sipping and snacking. The website offers a monthly calendar of nearly nightly live music, with afternoon performances on Fridays and Saturdays. It’s a come-as-you-are casual spot but leave the kids with a sitter; this place has a serious age limit of 21. 600 Poland Ave. 504-948-9111, bacchanalwine.com
Mamou. This restaurant quickly has become a mandatory stop on our annual visits to the Big Easy. Mamou, which opened in the lower French Quarter in 2022, is a tiny, incredibly charming spot with excellent French food and hospitality. It’s rare to encounter a floor sommelier in small independent restaurants these days, so we delight in the expert selections and brilliant pairings they always suggest. The list is comfortable in size and reasonably priced, for the quality. 942 N. Rampart St. 504-381-4557, mamounola.com
Patron Saint. This new, well-curated wine shop features classic and offbeat wines, and also offers a list of rotating pours in an airy, inviting space. In addition, guests can pick a bottle from the retail wall to enjoy in the shop, ideally with a huge slice from the adjoining pizza shop. 1152 Magazine St. 504-321-7771, patronsaintwine.com
Credit: Krista Slater
Credit: Krista Slater
Really Really Nice Wines. This is a small but mighty natural wine shop with a delightfully casual, down-to-earth approach to enjoying and learning about wine. It also has a tiny bar where you can enjoy a glass and snacks. Reasonably priced quaffers and very rare, high-end wines are available, so there is a bottle to match every occasion (we grabbed a fun, $20 German red for gumbo night with friends). On our most recent visit, we took their frozen orange wine to go from the bar (because, New Orleans) and sipped on this delicious, frosty concoction as we enjoyed the lovely Garden District. 3500 Magazine St. 504-309-8744, reallyreallynicewines.com
Tell Me Bar. The team at this sexy natural wine spot for late-nighters is as wine-knowledgeable as they are cool. Search their social media for details on DJ nights and food pop-ups, but you always can get a great tinned fish snack, and happy-hour specials are available until 6 p.m., for the earlier wine-drinking crowd. 1235 St. Thomas St. thetellmebar.com
Cocktails
Cure. This place helped relaunch the craft cocktail movement in New Orleans and has become an anchor for bustling Freret Street in the Uptown neighborhood. Other spots — including Carousel Bar, the Sazerac Bar, Tujague’s and the French 75 bar (in Arnaud’s restaurant) — have kept New Orleans drinking traditions alive, but Cure upped the ante with fresh ingredients and an extra-large selection of spirits from which to build perfected classics and modernized original cocktails. 4905 Freret St. 504-302-2357, curenola.com
Fives. An oasis on beautiful but tourist-heavy Jackson Square, this spot is great for a well-executed cocktail and a tray of raw oysters. It’s from hotelier-developer couple Jayson Seidman and Paris Neill (they also have the St. Vincent and Columns hotels) and has a turn-of-the-20th-century vibe. The inviting, minimalist design is based on the New York bar Maison Premiere, which itself was conceived as an ideal New Orleans cocktail and oyster bar. 529 St. Ann St. 504-399-6954, fives.bar
Hotel St. Vincent. Sometime during our trips to New Orleans, we inevitably end up at the Paradise Lounge in this hotel. Originally built as home to the St. Vincent Infant Asylum orphanage, the impeccably remodeled hotel is located conveniently in the Lower Garden District, just past the shopping area. If the weather cooperates, we take our expertly stirred martinis to their front porch and watch the afternoon passersby. 1507 Magazine St. 504-350-2450, saintvincentnola.com
Jewel of the South. This spot from Chris Hannah helped kick off the new generation of quality drinking establishments in the French Quarter. Located in a Creole cottage that’s more than 200 years old, Jewel has racked up a James Beard Award and a World’s 50 Best Bars designation in its first five years. Deeply researched classic cocktails, inventive riffs on those classics and wonderful hospitality keep us coming back every year. 1026 St. Louis St. 504-265-8816, jewelnola.com
Peychaud’s. This bar in the heart of the French Quarter is connected to the Celestine hotel but has its own entrance. The hotel and bar are located in the former residence of Antoine Peychaud, the druggist who created Peychaud’s bitters, an essential ingredient for classic New Orleans drinks, including the sazerac, the city’s official cocktail. Although it is just a couple of doors down from Bourbon Street, you’ll feel miles away in the hotel’s hidden courtyard. 727 Toulouse St. 504-884-4783, thecelestinenola.com/peychauds
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