Singapore's bar scene has a new trend: big drinks brands skipping the crowded backbar and building entire venues of their own. The latest arrivals are Choya, the Japanese plum liqueur house, and Chinese baijiu giant Kweichow Moutai, and they join an impressive line-up that already includes The Macallan and Suntory's Hibiki.
Choya's third Ginza Bar (after Tokyo and Hong Kong) opened in September at Millenia Walk. It's small and atmospheric, built around a six-seat counter pouring Singapore-only cocktails. Expect drinks like the Matcha Ume Sour, where matcha adds an earthy bitterness to the sweet plum spirit, and The Choya Okudaru, mixing Choya French Oak with bourbon and shoyu. The kitchen gets creative too - think grilled chicken skewers with an ume sherry glaze, lasagna with ume béchamel, and beef short rib braised in the liqueur itself.
Moutai's play is far bigger. Its three-storey experiential centre at Fullerton Waterboat House brings together a gallery of annual vintages dating back to 1965, more than 300 exclusive labels, and rare bottles valued at up to S$1 million. There's a 45-seat fine-dining restaurant run with Michelin-starred Imperial Treasure, serving Guizhou and Huaiyang cuisines, plus a rooftop bar called Sohaus with Moutai-inspired cocktails - which doubles as a café by day, pouring boozy coffee and Moutai-infused ice cream. It's the first Moutai House anywhere to combine brand discovery, collecting, retail, fine dining and a destination cocktail bar under one roof, and the company says Singapore is the starting point for a wider rollout.
They're following a path The Macallan blazed in 2023 with its architect-designed boutique at Raffles Hotel, and Suntory's Barrel Story of Hibiki - the first Hibiki-led restaurant outside Japan - where chef Sho Naganuma pairs wood-fired izakaya cooking with one of Asia's largest Suntory whisky collections.
Why Singapore? The brands themselves point to a compact, connected, wealthy market where word of mouth travels fast, plus a local audience that's well-travelled and genuinely curious about unfamiliar drinking cultures. Beer dominates the local market, so spirits houses are betting that immersive experiences - tastings, paired dinners, storytelling - will win them a bigger share of the glass.
For travellers, this is a genuinely fun reason to book a bar crawl with a difference. These aren't just marketing exercises; they're some of the few places in the world where you can taste a single brand's full range side by side, from a dozen-plus Choya expressions to Moutai vintages spanning six decades. Add them to an itinerary that already includes some of Asia's best cocktail bars, and Singapore's case as the region's drinks capital gets even stronger.
