Basic Spirits to Stock a Home Bar

Hi everybody! Wow. What a day. It's a fine day to mow your lawn, sit out, drowse in the sun, and kick back in front of the tube to with a cold beer and nachos and cheese to watch the Yanks or the Mets. It's just a fine, beautiful, heck of a Spring day--one of the days it seems like God himself created for us to rejoice and be glad in.

Today we're going to look at a few basic spirits you might want to stock a home bar with. You can make pretty much all the basic drinks that people might want with these five plus the other mixers we've already spoken about. Although on our Twitter feed we often tweet more complex drinks, most people you'll serve from a home bar won't want more than a gin and tonic or a Bloody Mary or a Jack and Coke. People simply don't expect to be drinking very complex drinks in a private home.

The first one here is brandy. This photo is actually a bottle of Cognac, which is simply brandy made in the French town of Cognac. The name brandy comes from the Dutch, brandevin which literally means "burnt wine". There was a time when the Dutch controlled international shipping in the wine business, and their secret for shipping huge quantities of wine was to distill it and then add water when it got to its destination.

The story goes that someone finally tasted the distilled ("burnt") wine and declared that it would be sinful to add water. Thus, distilled wine became a popular drink: brandy.



Vodka is simply a distilled neutral grain spirit. In Poland they make it by infusing boiling water with potatoes or beets, fermenting the resulting sugary water, and then distilling it. You can actually make vodka with pretty much any fruit or vegetable--most "bathtub" moonshine in the US is not strictly whiskey, it's vodka. You just boil some water with potatoes or beets or whatever carbohydrate (sugar) laden fruit or vegetable you have, ferment the mixture with yeast, and then distill the resulting fermented mixture.

Moving on...gin.


Gin is vodka with juniper berry flavoring. It's infused with juniper berries and often other botanicals--citrus peel and what have you. The more expensive the gin, usually, the more complex and subtle the flavors. That's why Bombay Sapphire is more expensive than Seagrams--Bombay Sapphire has a more complex taste profile.

Gin, incidentally is sometimes called "mother's ruin" because it was believed back in the day that juniper berries could cause women to miscarry children. (The name "gin" comes from the word "juniper".) If someone is living a debauched life, they are sometimes said to be living on "gin lane".



Tequila--a regular, good solid brand in the photo. Made of the fermented pulp of the agave cactus from Mexico.

I'm told that barring Florida, in the Midwest and the Deep South, men do not share the Jersey Shore's predilection for drinking tequila. It's thought to be a bit feminine.

I disagree--I think tequila is a very manly drink. Just drink it in a tequila sunrise or as a tequila cruda (lick it, slam it, suck it).
Another drink that has also become very popular during the recent tequila craze is agave wine--tequila is distilled agave pulp; agave wine is simply fermented and much lower in alcohol content. Another related drink is pulque which is the fermented sap of the maguey plant--pulque is the traditional drink with chocolate ants.


Whiskey. Distilled beer. In the case of Jack Daniels, made from a "sour" mash--a mash that has already been used to produce beer once and hence is "sour".

Jack Daniels is a very high quality whiskey; Jack is often mixed with Coke (Jack and Coke) or with club soda (whiskey and soda)







The last thing you'd need to stock a home bar is rum. Rum is made from distilled sugarcane--usually distilled molasses. English sailors who sailed to Jamaica and Hispaniola and the sugarcane plantations would often suffer from scurvy--a terrible disease brought on by not having enough vitamin C in one's diet.

However, these sailors learned that they could prevent scurvy by drinking the juice of lemons or limes, or sucking on lemons or limes. But raw lemon and lime is quite sour. Since the sailors were in an area where sugarcane and molasses was plentiful, someone came up with the idea to distill molasses and mix it with lemon or lime juice, creating a refreshing sweet and sour alcoholic drink that would (in theory) prevent scurvy. What more could you want out of a cocktail?

In any case, those are the "big six". Everything else is extra and optional--some would say that even the tequila is extra and optional, but I strongly disagree. But those plus the mixers I already went over--tonic water, bitters, and simple syrup, plus dry vermouth and fruit juices--lemon or lime and orange and cranberry and grapefruit and possibly pineapple--and Coca Cola or Pepsi and club soda and grenadine is basically all you need to stock a home bar and make any drink or cocktail that any guest is likely to want in a home situation.

See you next time for some basic cocktail recipes that everyone should know--five oldies and five more modern, for making at home or ordering in bars. 'Til next time, enjoy the day!