Stop the bottle cold turkey and you might just be pleasantly surprised! I think a lot of times our children are way more resilient than we give them credit for. And I know some people will say but he's only young once and you'll miss the cuddling! Quite honestly though, this shouldn't be about appeasing your needs to cuddle longer but rather help him know that he can go to sleep peacefully without a bottle because, you're right, as more teeth come in the last thing you want to do is bathe the teeth in sugary milk prior to bed and let the sugar go to work on the enamel.
At 12 months, we tweaked our bedtime routine to mimic our nap routine. The nap routine included going upstairs, 3 songs of rocking, and then putting the baby down drowsy but awake. He didn't need a bottle for nap and was able to go down great for his nap so I thought, there's no reason he can't do this for bedtime either! So we would put him in his pajamas and clean diaper about 15-30 minutes before his bedtime then go back downstairs for the last little bit of playing, except our playing consisted of more quiet activities (sitting on my lap looking at books) with the lights down low, preparing for sleep. Then we would go upstairs and do the bedtime routine and down he went for bed. Before that, he used to get an 8 ounce bottle of milk but we just simply cut it out cold turkey.
I was petrified. I was thinking, oh my goodness I'm going to have a few nights of howling and screaming. Much to my surprise, he didn't skip a beat and went down without a problem. We literally cut out bottles at 12 months cold turkey both at meals and at bed/nap and it didn't bother him at all.
Give your son a chance - he might just pleasantly surprise you!