Stocking Your Home Bar

You don't have to rush out and spend a fortune on booze and mixers to have a reasonably well-stocked home bar. Most people who drink alcohol will have a range of drinks they're happy with—it's actually more important to have something—juice, ice tea, or soda—for the non-drinkers, for people pacing themselves, and for the designated drivers. As your experience with mixology grows, though, you'll find yourself wanting to experiment with more obscure cocktail recipes, and you may well discover yourself acquiring strong preferences for some spirits over others, and the next stage in your development as a home-bartending enthusiast—or at least, in my own—is the desire to compare and contrast different brands, to create drinks with a signature twist.

You need a decent unflavored rum; Bacardi is your reasonable starting point, Myers is much better. Rum is a basic ingredient of an enormous quantity of "tropical," fruity drinks, and the core ingredient of the always popular rum-and-coke, (or Cuba Libre, if you add lime.) You can buy light rum or dark. Dark rum has a more characteristic and stronger rum flavor, so it stands up better to strong flavors like pineapple or coconut. Should you find yourself mixing a lot of fruity sorts of drinks, then you might want to play with the various flavors Malibu rum offers. Again, I'm a purist. I'd personally much rather use a high-quality dark rum, with real juice.

A decent unflavored vodka will let you make bloody marys, vodka martinis, and a variety of mixed drinks. Smirnoff or Stolichnaya are your most economical choices of reasonable quality; Ketel One, or Absolut are fine; Grey Goose is better. If bloody marys are your specialty, though, then you might find it rewarding to experiment with the various citron or pepper vodkas available. And if you find yourself entranced by the flavored vodka martinis so fashionable currently, then Absolut and Three Olives both make a wide variety of excellent flavored vodkas for you to experiment with.

If you plan to make margaritas or tequila sunrises, you'll need a bottle of tequila. For god's sake, don't buy anything cheaper or of lower quality than Cuervo Gold. Top shelf tequila is very much worth exploring, it's as smooth and sip-able as cognac. Bad tequila just isn't worth the pain. I favor Patrón Silver, personally.

When we start talking about whiskey, stocking your bar can quite quickly get rather more complex. At bare minimum, you'll need a bottle of decent blended whiskey. Something like Black Velvet, R and R, or Canadian club. Most whiskeys are a blend, but you want something fairly middle-of-the-road. A lot of people will ask for a whiskey-and-whatever— whiskey and coke, whiskey and ginger, whiskey and lemonade . . . and unless they specify bourbon or scotch, they're actually asking for a blend. If you're willing to spend a little more, though, then you'll want a bottle of bourbon, a bottle of scotch, and a bottle of Irish. Not complicated enough, yet? No worries. There are a terrific variety of the different whiskeys available to explore. You can spend a great deal of money on a single bottle of scotch, for example—but you certainly don't need to, to enjoy learning the complexities and beauties of a well-made whiskey. . . or whisky, for that matter. But that might be another post.

In terms of the mixers, I'm an old fashioned purist; I'd rather limes than Rose's Lime Juice, I'd rather Worstershire sauce and Tabasco than bloody Mary mix, and I'm philosophically opposed to margaritas that don't have fresh squeezed lime juice. That said, you can get a six pack each of the basics: Tonic water, soda water, ginger ale and Coke (don't use diet versions) without going broke. That way, you're not taking up a lot of room to store them, and you're not constantly raiding the kitchen (though stashing a couple of bottles in the fridge before you expect guests is a good idea). The tomato juice, orange juice and pineapple juice are all available in small bottles too; it's worth spending a little extra to get actual juice rather than something that has so much corn syrup in it that it's almost Koolaid. You'll need a small container of sugar or sugar cubes, a small bottle of Angostura bitters, for Old Fashioneds or other cocktails, a bottle of dry vermouth, a bottle of Tabasco, and a bottle of Worstershire sauce. You'll likely want a bottle of grenadine, to add a flair to non-alcoholic beverages, and to add the "sunrise" to your tequila sunrises.

Don't forget the garnishes; a couple of lemons, oranges and limes, and a small bottle of quality olives and one of mareschino cherries are a must. If you're planning on bloody marys you might want to cut some celery stalks with leaves into attractive garnish-sized pieces, and you might consider pickled asparagus spears. If you haven't picked them up already, toothpicks are awfully handy, and cocktail straws and cocktail napkins or coasters can add professional touch (and protect your furniture). You might want to stock up on ice; smaller cubes are better, but with planning, you can easily make your own and stash them in a ziplock bag.