What to buy, and when
Building a home bar, in the order that actually pays off
Most essential-bottles lists are a list of opinions. This one is arithmetic, worked out against the drinks on this site.
The useful question is not "which spirits are popular". It is "given what I already own, what does the next bottle actually add?" — and the answer changes with every bottle you buy.
Working through the 188recipes on this site one bottle at a time produces an order that looks wrong until you see the reasoning. Bourbon comes third, ahead of dark rum, even though dark rum appears in nearly twice as many recipes: most of the dark rum drinks need a second or third bottle as well, and the bourbon drinks don't.
A note on method: this is a greedy search, so it is not provably the best possible ten bottles for a fixed budget. It is the order you shop in — one at a time, each time asking what to buy next — which is why it is presented this way rather than as a single optimal shopping list. Ice, water, sugar and salt are assumed to be in the house already (6 items), and a drink counts as unlocked when every bottle it needs is on the shelf.
25 drinks · 13% of the catalogue
The first three bottles
Enough to make real drinks rather than approximations of them. Each of these three is doing work the other two cannot.
1. Gin
+10 new drinks10 in totalAppears in 27 recipes on the site. Adding it opens up Tom Collins, Gimlet, Clover Club, Bee's Knees and 6 more.
Buying: London dry styles are the safest all-purpose choice; save more floral or citrus-heavy gins for cocktails that showcase them
Keeping it: keeps indefinitely, store upright away from light
Usually sold in 700ml, 1000ml.
More on Gin →2. Vodka
+8 new drinks18 in totalAppears in 22 recipes on the site. Adding it opens up Moscow Mule, Bloody Mary, Sea Breeze, Screwdriver and 4 more.
Buying: Mid-range is the sensible ceiling. Vodka is distilled and filtered specifically to remove character, so the gap between a decent bottle and an expensive one is far smaller than in any other spirit — and invisible under a mixer.
Keeping it: keeps indefinitely, store upright away from light; some prefer chilling or freezing for straight sipping
Usually sold in 700ml, 1000ml.
More on Vodka →3. Tequila Blanco
+7 new drinks25 in totalAppears in 10 recipes on the site. Adding it opens up Paloma, Tequila Sunrise, Tommy's Margarita, Mexican Mule and 3 more.
Buying: look for '100% agave' on the label; mixto tequilas cut with other sugars taste noticeably harsher
Keeping it: keeps indefinitely, store upright away from light
Usually sold in 700ml, 1000ml.
More on Tequila Blanco →
42 drinks · 22% of the catalogue
Bottles four to six
This is where a shelf stops being a starter kit. Each addition here unlocks fewer drinks than the first three did — that fall-off is the point, not a problem.
4. Bourbon
+7 new drinks32 in totalAppears in 9 recipes on the site. Adding it opens up Old Fashioned, Whiskey Sour, Mint Julep, Gold Rush and 3 more.
Buying: straight bourbon aged at least two years offers noticeably more character than the youngest bottom-shelf options
Keeping it: keeps indefinitely, store upright away from light
Usually sold in 700ml, 1000ml.
More on Bourbon →5. Dark Rum
+6 new drinks38 in totalAppears in 18 recipes on the site. Adding it opens up Dark 'n' Stormy, Painkiller, Vietnamese Coffee Cocktail, Hot Buttered Rum and 2 more.
Buying: Look for a stated country of origin and, ideally, a producer that discloses whether colour comes from ageing or caramel. Avoid anything labelled only 'spiced' if a recipe asks for dark rum — spiced rum is a different, sweeter product.
Keeping it: keeps indefinitely, store upright away from light
Usually sold in 700ml, 1000ml.
More on Dark Rum →6. White Rum
+4 new drinks42 in totalAppears in 14 recipes on the site. Adding it opens up Mojito, Daiquiri, Piña Colada, Bacardí Cocktail.
Buying: look for rum labelled 'filtered' or 'silver' rather than the youngest, cheapest mixer rum for a smoother pour
Keeping it: keeps indefinitely unopened; once opened, store upright away from direct sunlight
Usually sold in 700ml, 1000ml.
More on White Rum →
61 drinks · 32% of the catalogue
Bottles seven to ten
Diminishing returns, deliberately. These are bought because you want a specific drink, not because they open the catalogue up.
7. Triple Sec
+5 new drinks47 in totalAppears in 11 recipes on the site. Adding it opens up Margarita, Long Island Iced Tea, White Lady, Kamikaze and 1 more.
Buying: This is the bottle where trading up pays off most visibly. Cheap triple sec is essentially orange-flavoured sugar; a decent one carries real peel bitterness that the Margarita and Sidecar genuinely need.
Keeping it: keeps well for a year or more once opened, store upright away from light
Usually sold in 700ml, 1000ml.
More on Triple Sec →8. Gold Rum
+5 new drinks52 in totalAppears in 10 recipes on the site. Adding it opens up Hurricane, Rum Punch, Cuba Libre, Bahama Mama and 1 more.
Buying: The most useful all-rounder for tiki builds. Buy on origin rather than age statement, since Caribbean ageing is fast and the number tells you less than it would for Scotch.
Keeping it: keeps indefinitely, store upright away from light
Usually sold in 700ml, 1000ml.
More on Gold Rum →9. Sparkling Wine
+5 new drinks57 in totalAppears in 13 recipes on the site. Adding it opens up French 75, Bellini, Mimosa, Hugo Spritz and 1 more.
Buying: a dry brut style is the most versatile choice for mixing
Keeping it: best served promptly once opened; unopened bottles keep for years stored on their side in a cool, dark place
Usually sold in 750ml, 1500ml.
More on Sparkling Wine →10. Cognac
+4 new drinks61 in totalAppears in 14 recipes on the site. Adding it opens up Sidecar, Between the Sheets, Tom and Jerry, Scorpion Bowl.
Buying: VS is fine for mixing; reserve VSOP and older expressions for sipping neat
Keeping it: keeps indefinitely, store upright away from light
Usually sold in 700ml, 1000ml.
More on Cognac →
The part the bottle lists leave out
What you actually run out of
Ten bottles unlock 61 drinks. The things below are needed far more often than any of them, and none is a bottle you buy once.
- Lime Juice52 recipes
A few days
best used within 24 hours of squeezing, refrigerate in a sealed container
- Lemon Juice41 recipes
A few days
best used within 24 hours of squeezing, refrigerate in a sealed container
- Orange Juice27 recipes
A few days
best used within a day or two of squeezing, refrigerate in a sealed container
- Angostura Bitters17 recipes
Keeps more or less indefinitely
keeps indefinitely, store upright away from light
- Pineapple Juice16 recipes
A few days
best used within 2-3 days once opened, refrigerate in a sealed container
Lime juice is needed by more recipes than any single bottle on this page. That is the most useful thing on it, and no list of essential spirits will ever tell you.
Zero-proof
The alcohol-free shelf is shorter, and that is not a compromise
Run the same arithmetic over the alcohol-free catalogue and it gives a different-shaped answer.
27 of the 36 alcohol-free recipes need no bottle at all — everything in them is fresh or already in the cupboard. The alcohol-free shelf is short because the drinks genuinely do not need it, not because the section is thinner.
Where a bottle does earn its place, the order is:
- 1. Alcohol-Free Spirit+4 drinks
- 2. Alcohol-Free Sparkling Wine+3 drinks
- 3. Alcohol-Free Aperitif+1 drinks
- 4. Alcohol-Free Vermouth+1 drinks
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