Meet the future of bartending.

Since it launched in 2018, the Best New Bartenders series has always been about recognizing burgeoning talent in the industry. In its inaugural year, our talent pool was, for various reasons, limited to the immediate New York City area. Now in its seventh year, our featured bartenders hail from coast to coast and everywhere in between—Milwaukee to New Orleans; Monterey, California, to Mystic, Connecticut. This geographic diversity reflects not only the growth of the program, but the unbridled spread of cocktail culture to every corner of the country. In this landscape, a decent drink is never far afield. And if this year’s Best New Bartenders have anything to say about it, that drink will be much more than decent. The class of 2024 understands the magnetism of a well-made cocktail. Each has a story of the one drink whose precise balance drew them to this line of work, and the ability of these drinks to be reconsidered in service of a bigger, often more personal, story. For this class, the through line is not any single style or approach, but the ability to use drinks as a tool for greater representation and human-to-human connection. Here, please meet the Best New Bartenders of 2024.