The drink list is half of it. The room is the other half, and Charlotte has an unusual number of rooms that used to be something else.
The cocktail end: Supperland in a former church, whose bar programme took the MICHELIN Exceptional Cocktails Award for Colleen Hughes. The Crunkleton on Elizabeth Avenue.
The other end: Thirsty Beaver, the dive that stayed put while an apartment block was built around it, and Snug Harbor, which has been running since 2007 and which at least one published list has already buried by mistake.
Beer: Wooden Robot in South End and Heist in NoDa are the easiest first stops in the two densest brewery neighborhoods.
Up high: Merchant & Trade, nineteen floors over Uptown. Late: Idlewild.
Filter by neighborhood, by what the room is for, or by whether it is actually open past midnight, which is a smaller list than you would think.