Bitter Tom’s Tasting Room

Downtown Rochester finally has a proper craft-cocktail perch, and it’s a homegrown one. Bitter Tom’s is a family-owned Michigan distillery — Tom and Sharon Bosley make the bourbon, vodka, gin, and rum at their Rochester Hills production facility — and this sliver of a tasting room on South Main is where you actually drink the results. Pull up a seat for a flight, a well-made Old Fashioned or Manhattan, or one of the cocktail classes they run for groups; it’s the kind of intimate, low-key spot built for a pre-dinner drink, a date, or a girls’ night that doesn’t need a big production. The vibe is warm and unfussy, the spirits are genuinely award-winning, and the fact that it’s local all the way down — distilled a few miles away, poured by people who care — is exactly the sort of thing we like to point people toward in downtown Rochester. On our list.