I picked up a bottle of Frangelico the other day and tonight I made some Bourbon Sours (Frangelico, Bourbon, bitters, simple syrup, lemon juice) and they were yummy. I can’t wait to explore this liqueur some more.
I love Frangelico, but haven’t had any in a long time.
Bartender for over a decade checking in.
OP is looking for additions to his/her starter bar, what I would add in order of importance and variety for those looking to explore liquor:
Midori - Colorful, in loads of tropical drinks. Tastes delicate and mixes well with just about anything.
Malibu - Coconut white rum, there is a difference. Great mixer.
Frangelico - A little pricey for our list, and not in lots of mixers. But it has a nice gentle hazel-nut flavor and is sweet so a good start to experimenting. Also on ice makes a nice after diner drink.
Triple Sec - OP likes Cointreau, start here for mixers though. Avoid Phillips brand always forever, anything else is ok.
There are loads of famous but disgusting beverages so I’d avoid anything with say Campari, Jagermeister, or Goldschlager in it, you might like it, but I doubt it.
You’ll need a respectable shaker, and the jigger if you don’t have pour spouts on your bottles.
Of course get loads of fruit juices and basic sodas. Orange, Pineapple, Cranberry, Coca-Cola, 7up. at the very least.
I have a well stocked bar because, ironically, I don’t drink at home ever unless I have company. So, the 18 year old Glenfiddich I bought 2 years ago still hasn’t even been opened. The point is that I have very slowly accumulated a modest but impressive cache of booze. I have Bombay Sapphire as my favorite gin, but I have sinned by eschewing Russian vodka for, of all things, a vodka made in Poland called Belvedere Vodka. It really is quite excellent. I have a bottle of Grand Marnier which, for my taste buds at least, is the Rolls Royce of liquors.
Mmmmm. On a cruise I ran into the sommelier during an afternoon at sea. We were chatting and I offered to buy him a drink. He asked for some Belvedere. He was Polish and was telling me all about his country. The building on a bottle of Belvedere is the presidential palace in Warsaw. He actually teared up from homesickness discussing Warsaw. When I can afford it, it’s Belvedere for me.
See, great minds do think alike! LOL
When my wife and I were first learning to drink (after recovering from a sober cult) we bought a lot of flavored vodkas to mimic sweet things we liked at bars. Those just sit in the cabinet and haven’t been touched in years.
Now when we’re hosting a party we have an actual menu for our guests (going from memory here. I’m not at home now).
Aviation: gin, creme de violette, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice.
Lemon Drop: vodka, simple syrup, triple sec, lemon juice. Rimmed with lemon zest and sugar.
Coconut Margarita: 1800 coconut tequila, agave nectar, lime juice, coconut water.
Apple Phucker: white rum, apple pucker, cranberry juice, red bull.
Gordon’s Breakfast: cucumber-infused gin, simple syrup, lime juice, worcestershire, hot sauce.
I’m going to add a Southside and a Mojito to my menu, although mint doesn’t stay fresh as long as the other ingredients so I can’t just shake one up spontaneously.
We also stock all the basic ingredients in case someone requests a dirty martini, pina colada, something-and-coke. Sambuca, amaretto, red and white wine (nothing more than $15), occasionally a not-too-pricey scotch. And a wide variety of weird beers. If you want boring beer you can bring your own.
I’ll be contrarian and say that the goal of being able to replicate a high end cocktail bar experience when entertaining at home is a fool’s errand, both in terms of waste of bottles and also an unpleasant experience for guests.
Home cocktail bars should start first and foremost with what you like to drink and a core set of interesting drinks that can accomodate a broad range of guests’ tastes. Nobody is really that picky when being entertained at someone else’s house, I might prefer a Rye Old Fashioned when going out but I’m going to be perfectly happy if served a Bourbon Old Fashioned at a dinner party. On the other hand, going to a cocktail nerd’s house with 40 different bottles and the choice of 300 different drinks they could make you is often overwhelming and unpleasant. Often, the drinks that I get made at such places are unbalanced and lacking distinction because the host hasn’t made the drink in over a year, if ever and they’re not quite sure how it’s meant to taste or what is distinctive about that cocktail.
I think, at its core, you need about 2 - 3 clear liquor choices and 2 - 3 brown liquor choices and cocktails options for each that fall on the fruity/bitter & smoky/crisp & clean/funky side and most people will be left happy. The flip side is that mastering a core menagerie of signature cocktails that work for you means you’re making them more often, allowing you to better taste and dial in what each cocktail is meant to taste like and you’re running through bottles faster, allowing you to experiment with different producers and understand how they impact the drink. I’m a huge fan of always having a backup of every core bottle from a different producer I’ve been meaning to try and, when I get to the bottle 1/3rd of a bottle, to pour half pours of both so people can compare and contrast. Human memory is fickle and if you’re not tasting the same thing regularly enough, you can often forget the nuances that are essential to mastery.
I also think the fetishization of the cocktail bar experience has lead to a massive blindspot in cocktail nerds on how bars are forced into suboptimal techniques due to the demand of volume and economics. For example, I think shaking cocktails with water ice is an unfortunate concession to the volume realities of running a bar but you can be much more creative about getting cocktails to the right temperature at home with dilution of a liquid more interesting than water. Whether it’s custom freezing juice ice cubes that match the drink or storing liquors in the freezer so they can be mixed with non-water liquids etc.
eg: If I know I’m going to be making frozen watermelon margaritas, I’ll freeze whole cubes of watermelon the night before and blend them. I also make a tomato water martini that involves pre-batching Hendrick’s Gin, tomato water and vermouth and freezing the entire mixture (along with glasses if I have room) so it comes out bracingly cold and at the appropriate level of dilution.
At the end of the day, you’re simply never going to have the volume at a home bar as any commercial establishment and I think you should embrace that for both the limitations and opportunities that it presents. Use the cocktail bar to experiment with new drinks and discover new flavors and then go home and buy bottles thoughtfully with a clear idea of what they will be used for an how to create a cohesive drinking experience, both for yourself and guests you choose to entertain.
I drink vodka straight so can’t advise on any mixers. I do know someone that kept a well stocked home bar and since he couldn’t keep fresh fruit for twists on hand all the time he found candied lemon, lime, and orange peel to use as a substitute. They’re just pieces of fruit peel dried out in a blanket of sugar, so maybe sweeter than intended for some of the drinks.
I’ll have to try this. My “lemon drop” is just equal volumes vodka and lemon juice, the vodka from a handle in the freezer. Doesn’t the simple syrup and sugar rimmed glass make it overly sweet?
It’s nice to know there are others who like vodka straight up. I always have a handle in the freezer.
I don’t remember the proportions, but it’s just a tiny bit of simple syrup and triple sec. It’s sweet, but not overly so. I think this is the recipe where the original called for 1/2 oz of each, but I’ve marked it up with pen to use less than 1/4 oz.
Chambord. I haven’t had a drink since 1986, but if I ever do again, it will be a cocktail with Chambord in it. That stuff is absolutely delicious.
This matches my attitude very closely. I want to be able to make a drink appropriate for the food/guests/event without too much concern about keeping an obscure liqueur on hand in case someone a drink they saw in a Bond movie.
I was looking at the V8 on the counter and thinking, ‘I wish we had some vodka.’ I can’t remember the last time we had vodka.
I’ve had it In champagne. Tasty
Personally I’ve never put much stock in having specific glasses for specific drinks/beverages.
IMO it’s kind of idiotic to have different types of glassware for pilsners, ales, etc… just like it’s kind of silly to have different glasses for different kinds of red wine.
Yeah, I know there’s a bunch of lore about aromas, etc… but unless you’re really serious, that isn’t going to matter.
Now all that said, I do actually have a lot of that stuff left over from wedding gifts. but most of it never gets used unless we have company over. 90% of the time we use some of those stemless wine glasses for wine/sparkling wine, mixed drinks, tiki drinks, and pretty much everything else save beer. Beer usually ends up in a handful of old pint glasses that I accumulated from a beer place that was near my old job (RIP Flying Saucer Addison) over about a decade. The spiffy pilsner glasses, the champagne flutes and the nice cocktail (think martini) glasses usually stay up in the cabinet. I think I’ve even got a couple of Old Fashioned glasses somewhere as well, but they don’t usually make it into the rotation.
The one I’ve got has no simple syrup, just Cointreau (triple sec).
LEMON DROP COCKTAIL
Sugar, for frosting the glass
2 ounces Absolut Citron vodka
¾ ounce fresh lemon juice
1 ounce Cointreau
Lemon wheel, for garnish
Frost the rim of a cocktail glass with sugar (see this page). Refrigerate until ready to serve. Shake all the remaining ingredients (except the garnish) well with ice and strain into the chilled cocktail glass. Float the lemon on top of the drink.
DeGroff, Dale. The New Craft of the Cocktail (p. 152). Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed. Kindle Edition.
As a Certifiable Beer Judge, I can tell you that the glass does matter, even to non-serious people. There are times when a pint glass is preferred, and times when a squat tulip glass is best. Do you need all the glassware? Of course not. But it really does exist for a reason - to enhance the drinking experience.
Personally, I hate stemless wine glasses. So much so that I even drink my beer out of a stemmed glass. 
I agree. I recently sold beer glasses (mostly duplicates) to someone, so I have 125 fewer in my collection.