The six-bottle starter list

This list is six bottles long for a physical reason. A standard 750 ml bottle is 2.95 inches in diameter; a 24 inch shelf takes eight of them touching and about six arranged the way a person actually arranges things. Six is not a philosophy, it is a shelf.

The order matters as much as the contents, because the failure mode of a home bar is not having too few bottles — it is having six bottles that all do the same job.

1. A base spirit you actually drink

Not the one you think a bar should have. The one you would pour tonight. If that is bourbon, buy bourbon; if it is a blanco tequila, buy that. This bottle is the reason the cart exists and everything else is chosen to support it.

2. A second base spirit that does a different job

The key word is different. If the first is a sipping spirit — an aged whiskey, a good rum — make the second something you mix with, such as gin or vodka. If the first is a mixer, make the second something worth drinking neat.

Two bottles that do the same job is one bottle of dead shelf, and dead shelf on a 24 inch surface is expensive.

3. A vermouth

The bottle that turns a spirit into a cocktail, and the one most home bars skip. Sweet vermouth if your bases lean brown; dry if they lean clear. One bottle, not both, until you have finished it.

One practical note that nobody mentions on a cart page: vermouth is wine, so it goes off. Once opened it belongs in a fridge, not on the cart. This is the single most common reason a home bar produces a bad drink.

4. Bitters

Small, inexpensive, effectively immortal, and it does more per milliliter than anything else you will own. A dash of bitters is what makes a simple drink taste finished rather than thin.

It is also the smallest bottle on the cart, which means it disappears behind everything else. Front row, or in the tray.

5. A citrus liqueur or a syrup

The sweet-and-sour axis. An orange liqueur is the most versatile single choice; a simple syrup is the cheapest. One of them, not a shelf of flavored syrups you will use once.

6. One long mixer

Tonic, soda or ginger beer. This is the bottle that lets you make someone a drink at three in the afternoon, and it is the one that makes the cart useful to people who do not drink spirits neat.

It is also the bottle most likely to be replaced weekly, so give it the most accessible position rather than the prettiest one.

What this makes

With six bottles chosen this way you can make a spirit neat, a spirit on ice, a highball, a spirit-and-vermouth stirred drink, and a sour if you have citrus in the kitchen. That is most of the cocktail canon and all of the drinks anyone actually asks for.

What you need alongside it: two glass shapes and five tools, both covered in how to stock a bar cart. The glass heights that decide which shelf they live on are in the glassware roundup.

The four-bottle version, for a small cart

On an 18 inch shelf — the narrow carts in the small-cart roundup — four bottles is the real number. Drop the second base spirit and the citrus liqueur: base, vermouth, bitters, mixer. It makes fewer drinks and it makes them just as well.