Line

A Former Art Gallery, a Circular Economy, and Athens' Most Decorated Bar Program

Walk into Agathodemonos 37 in Keramikos and you encounter a space that refuses easy categorisation. The ceiling height reads industrial; the Mediterranean light and raw materials soften it. The building spent its previous life as an art gallery, and something of that orientation persists: the objects on the bar — fermentation vessels, bottles of house fruit wine, a sourdough starter — are arranged with the same deliberate attention you would expect in an exhibition. This is Line, and the aesthetic coherence is not incidental. It reflects a bartending philosophy that treats production, waste, and hospitality as a single interconnected system.

Athens has produced a cluster of internationally ranked bars over the past decade, a fact that surprised the global industry when it first emerged and has since become a structural feature of the city's hospitality identity. The Clumsies, a regular in the World's 50 Best Bars rankings, established the template: rigorous technique, warm service, and a format that resists the more theatrical tendencies of European cocktail culture. Line is the next iteration of that approach, built by the same core team and operating from a premise further removed from the city centre, in a neighbourhood where rents and expectations both allow for a more experimental brief.

The Circular Economy Bar, in Practice

The concept that organises Line's entire operation is a closed-loop production model. The bar ferments its own fruit wines, beers, and sourdough breads on-site. Waste from those processes feeds back into the cocktail list, which means the menu is not assembled from imported spirits and purchased mixers but constructed from what the bar itself produces. This is a meaningful operational distinction from the majority of cocktail programs globally, where sustainability commitments tend to stop at straws and local ice.

At the centre of the drinks offering is a category the bar calls Why-ins: fruit wines made in-house in collaboration with Thanos Georgilas, a Greek winemaker whose involvement brings genuine viticultural credibility to what could otherwise read as a gimmick. The Why-ins divide into two groups. Classic Why-ins use only fruit, yeast, and time, following the logic of traditional grape wine production applied to a wider range of raw ingredients. Fancy Why-ins extend that base with flavoured distillates, aromas, or fresh fruit additions, drawing on the team's bartending background rather than winemaking convention. The result is a drinks menu where the middle tier , between spirits-led cocktails and conventional wine , is occupied by something that Athens, and most bar programs anywhere, have not previously attempted at this level of seriousness.

For those drawn toward the cocktail list, the Delusional Margarita has become a reference point: reposado tequila combined with mustard, ketchup, potato water, and spices, a combination that sounds deliberately antagonistic and reportedly delivers something coherent and well-balanced. That tension between provocation and palatability is precisely the kind of editorial statement that separates bartenders with deep flavour knowledge from those merely executing trends. It is also the kind of drink that spreads through the industry's word-of-mouth networks, and Line's rankings suggest it has done exactly that.

The Team and the Tradition Behind It

Greek bar culture has developed its own lineage over the past fifteen years, with a handful of Athens-based bartenders accumulating international recognition at a rate that has few parallels in European cities of comparable size. Vasilis Kyritsis and Nikos Bakoulis, two of Line's co-creators, built that reputation through The Clumsies, whose repeated appearances in the World's 50 Best Bars list established Athens as a serious destination rather than a peripheral market. Dimitris Dafopoulos completes the founding group at Line, bringing additional creative depth to the project.

What the World's 50 Best ranking of #6 in 2024 signals is not simply that the bar is well-regarded; it means the program is being judged against the most technically advanced bars in London, New York, Tokyo, and Singapore and placing above almost all of them. A drop to #12 in 2023 and a position of #120 in the Top 500 Bars for 2025 reflects the natural volatility of a ranking system that refreshes annually, but the sustained presence across multiple years and lists indicates a program with depth rather than a single notable season. For context, bars in the upper tier of the 50 Best list are typically distinguished not by their cocktail list alone but by the coherence of their hospitality model , service, environment, concept, and execution treated as a unified proposition. Line's circular economy framework provides exactly that kind of structural coherence.

Compared to other bars operating at a high level in Athens, Line occupies a distinct niche. Baba au Rum built its reputation on rum's global spectrum; Barro Negro works from an agave-centred program; The Bar in Front of the Bar operates as one of the city's more technically focused cocktail destinations. Line's differentiation is not primarily in the spirit category it champions but in the production system it has built around its entire offering. That is a harder position to replicate and a more durable competitive advantage.

Getting There and Planning Your Visit

Line operates Wednesday through Saturday, from 11:30 to 21:00, hours that place it firmly in the late-morning-to-early-evening bracket rather than the late-night category. That timing shapes the experience: this is not a bar you arrive at after dinner elsewhere; it is more naturally a destination for a considered afternoon session, particularly on weekends. The address, Agathodemonos 37 in the 118 53 postcode, sits in Keramikos, a neighbourhood that has steadily absorbed a wave of creative and hospitality businesses over the past decade. It is accessible from the city centre by metro or a short taxi ride, though the area itself rewards a slower approach on foot if you are arriving from nearby Gazi or Psyrri.

Athens in November and December offers a different proposition from the high-season crowds of summer: the city operates at a more manageable pace, daylight hours remain generous by northern European standards, and the bar's afternoon window aligns well with cooler temperatures that make a Why-in or a classics-based cocktail more appealing than they might be in August heat. For those building a broader Athens itinerary, the full Athens bars guide maps the city's ranked bar programs alongside neighbourhood context, and the Athens restaurants guide provides the dining counterpart. For accommodation planning, the Athens hotels guide covers the full range of the city's options. Those interested in Greece's broader drink culture beyond bars can also consult the Athens wineries guide and Athens experiences guide.

For those whose bar travel extends beyond Athens, the wider Greek bar scene includes destinations such as Gorilla in Thessaloniki and Scorpios in Mykonos, while internationally the circular-economy and sustainability-led bar movement has produced notable programs like Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu, which offers an instructive point of comparison for those tracking how this operational model plays out across different contexts.