We keep a few bottles on bottom, the rest in our hutch. The top is decor and a great spot for a lamp (living room, near kitchen).

We don’t use it for serving or mixing drinks because after downsizing, it’s not in a convenient spot. (We kept it more for sentimental reasons and it makes a good table.)

None here - we have a bar in our lower level so all the liquor is stored out of sight in a lower cabinet there other than what's on a wine rack. At our cabin it's in the pantry closet. For some reason I don't care to have booze out on display - probably has something to do with all the alcoholics in my family.

Dang it Jinx, now I have bar cart envy! Although at my house it would be a tea cart.

I love fru fru cocktails but really can't drink them anymore. If it's not one issue with booze it's another. Mainly right now I can't afford the empty calories and keep my weight down far enough. Also, I was bragging up on the inflation thread that it hasn't affected us much, but if I started drinking like my palate dictated, I could burn through a lot of dough on fru fru mixers and liqueurs and high end hard liquor.

I don't use a bar cart. My set up is a little in between, using a marble topped chest of drawers in the living room. I have the booze corralled on a lacquered tray(my children say we look like lushes). On the other side of the tray I keep the tonic, Perrier, Rose's Lime and a bowl with lemons and limes once people are coming over. Ideally I would have more room for glasses and ice, but I have not worked that out yet.

All this to say, I would still use the tray on the bar cart for ease of cleaning. Those bottles get awfully dusty quickly- well, except for the gin, tequila and Pimm's at my house ;-)

Remember our space is still a work in progress. And we don’t have kids who can get to the booze. AND we have a weekly housekeeper who keeps this mess dust free. Cart from Ballard Designs.

P.S. the boxes store china for my niece. I’m trying to pawn them off on my mom so she can store them. 😂

1929, love that Madmen vibe!

I think liquor bottles are so pretty. I have a wicker bar cart that came with the house in Maine; it's not sturdy enough to use as such so we keep ping pong balls and citronella candles on it pretty much.

Here, we have an armoire we bought from the PO. I like it a lot. I'm not allowed to photograph it RN but maybe when *they* are done dinner.

No bar cart here - we barely drink alcohol any more anyway, and I just keep it all in the liquor cupboard on one side of a MCM credenza, but this made me think of an old 'dry bar' that belonged to my dad's father. It's pretty cool, with a swivel door. I think it's from the 20s/30s. It's at my mom's house now.

No bar cart for me either. I have a vintage cabinet / sideboard with a beveled mirror backsplash that was my husband's grandmother's. It was one of the few things we received after she passed away. It's in our basement near the pool table. Most of the liquor is inside the cabinet and a few out on top for decoration.

We have a bar in the dining that absolutely looks like all we do is drink. But I like to cook with alcohol and when you need a couple of ounces you have to buy a bottle so we do collect stuff that way also. We have lots of bitters and Pimm’s and Aperol and Lillet on hand right now for the warmer weather.

My counter surface is 3 feet by 2 feet with storage for glassware above, drawers for wine related items and cocktail napkins and anything else in the cupboard below. I keep a pewter ice bucket and scoop on the counter along with all the bottles. i think it looks quite festive 😎🍾

I was on a bar cart quest for the last house, until I thought about the dusting. That killed it for me. We store the liquor in pur sideboard, drinks tray on top. I love a negroni.

Love it!

Gorgeous armoir! Plus my beloved St. Germain, pretty and delicious :-)

The armoire and the contents are lovely Mtn.

Wow! I love the look of the bottles and ALL the displays....very classy.....🍷Well staged everyone!

I own one bottle of peach brandy....that I cook with. The bar area is built-in and there's a commercial ice machine and wine cooler....all turned off.

Zal, fellow St. Germaine lover here. This is my favorite cocktail using St. Germaine. The name is a bit silly, but it is good!

Bichon Frise

1/4 oz or 7.5 ml fresh lemon juice

3/4 oz or 22.5 ml St. Germain

1 oz or 30 ml fresh grapefruit juice

1.5 oz or 45 ml vodka

Rim a chilled coup glass halfway around with granulated sugar and set aside. Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake to chill and dilute. Double strain and garnish with a grapefruit peel.

You might also try FeverTree Elderflower Tonic for G&Ts in the summer.

Fresh wine… I LOVE that! Ingenious repurposing of that lovely armoire and the blue glasses are very pretty, Mtn.

Thank you so much for the cocktail recipe, bbstx and the rec for elderflower tonic from Fever Tree. I may report back as early as this weekend ;-)

BBTSX, yum, I love grapefruit

I know, really, KSWL. The next time I serve wine for company I will have to tell them it is fresh.The glasses are St. Louis' Thistle pattern. I took my Mom to Paris when i got my first big job and she convinced me I needed these. They worked better, perhaps, in my brick Georgian; here I use them on a bare farm table with paper placemats!

We have a dry bar downstairs in our den, but when it's just the two of us, we have the tendency to mix drinks in the kitchen upstairs. Schlepping bottles or ice up and down can be annoying. We only keep it that way because there's no room to store all of that stuff upstairs.

Ours is not a bar cart, it's a vintage dresser, and I love it. We store short glasses, napkins and small barware in the top drawers. The other drawers store guest linens and random things. Our den is our "rumpus room", complete with a green shag rug! LOL.

other side:

I am drooling over your bar carts and bar setups. I happen to have a booze delivery coming today-- a couple of Deep Eddy vodkas a botanical vodka and a gift. Now i see I need to order St Germaine also!

My long time favorite drink on a warm day is vodka and soda with fruit (citrus slices or blackberries). Easy and refreshing.. and also no extra calories from mixers. I am also known to drink Ramona grapefruit wine spritzer from a can. Not classy but super easy and I really enjoy them.

Funkyart -- do you have any St Germaine cocktail ideas? We hate the stuff, it's way too sweet. I prefer sour (like anything made with real citrus) or bittersweet (like negronis or manhattans). I can't find a way to get St Germaine to work with sour or bitter flavors.

If you want to tone down the sweetness, just don't use a lot and pair it with lime, lemon or grapefruit. Or alas, you may have to give it away.

Thise wine glasses are perfect for any setting—-they are so lovely they demand to be used! And they certainly elevate paper plates and napkins to unheard of heights 🏔

Seattle, I was specifically thinking of the cocktail BBSTX shared above.. but I don't like sweet drinks as a rule. Club soda and vodka (flavored or not) and fresh fruit work great for me-- btu sometimes I may want to do something a little extra.

I'll be honest.. i like to be served. In a bar or otherwise. Maybe I just leave the craft cocktails to the experts.

Bb, thanks for that recipe, sounds delish!

The only cocktail I really know how to make is a vodka and soda, LOL, to which I add a splash of cranberry juice. We had friends over a few weeks ago and I made aperol spritzes, of course I had to google a recipe, and they were yummy so I’m going to make them part of my summer rotation. I love a moscow mule, but never made my own. In Charleston last month I had one at Hank’s that was made with candied ginger. So now I have bought candied ginger and ginger beer and am waiting for the copper cups I ordered to arrive.

We used to keep the booze in the dining room closet but mixed the drinks in the kitchen, so I finally moved the bottles to a kitchen cabinet. I wish I had a spot for a bar cart!

My DH makes the best raspberry lemondrop martinis. Mmm. But we don’t do a lot of cocktails, mainly wine and whatever fancy beers he likes. I can’t drink beer, hate the taste so much.

Jinx, Have you tried raspberry beer? A waiter at The Ginger Man on Columbus Circle suggested it to me eons ago. I am forever grateful to him. Spoiler, it tastes nothing like beer ...

Club soda and vodka (flavored or not) and fresh fruit work great for me.

Same, but only unflavored vodka. Or rye and soda. We drink so much club soda (with or w/o alcohol) that we wore out our soda stream machine!

I'll be honest.. I like to be served. In a bar or otherwise. Maybe I just leave the craft cocktails to the experts.

me too! my husband is the one who likes to mix drinks. lucky me!

Zalco, no, but that does sound good. Hmm. Might have to rethink my stance. :D

This is a new martini I’m going to try at a patio restaurant we like. They make seasonal specialities. Last fall was a pear cobbler one that was one of the best drinks I’ve ever had.

Description: Texas gin, honeysuckle liqueur, homemade lavendar syrup, and lemon.

My sweet DSIL loves to make cocktails. Whenever I go visit him and DD, he’s usually working on perfecting a new recipe and I get to be the guinea pig. This visit he was working on the Clover Club Cocktail. The first time he served it to me, he made it with grenadine syrup. The next time, he had made his own raspberry syrup. Even though it has either grenadine or raspberry syrup, it is fairly tart.

https://www.liquor.com/recipes/clover-club/

Seattle-- same. I drink rye/bourbon & soda in fall and winter.. vodka and soda in spring/Summer. When I went out more, "my" bartenders eagerly anticipated when I deemed it time to switch.

Jinx, we have a local place that makes margaritas with honeysuckle liqueur. They are a very interesting shade of lavender.

Bb, I love the taste.

There’s a great place in Fort Worth that makes honeysuckle sangria … ahhhh. I got in big trouble with those. So, so good.

Mtn, I love your barmoire. (can I take credit for coining that or is it already a thing?) Our bar is in its own room with a couple of armchairs and a high top table. We love having a separate area when friends come over (or used to, anyway.)

Jojo, I am oozing with jealousy right now. I want a bar room! I’d have parties every night.

I’d name it Studio 55, since 54 is taken.

I’m going to Jojo’s house!

Here’s a couple cocktails I like:

Equal parts St Germaine/Martini Bianco/Gin shaken

Equal parts St Germaine/Gin with Fever Tree Grapefruit and cucumber with ice

@Zalco/bring back Sophie! Lindemens are lambic beers and I love them!

Most commercial beers are made with carefully selected strains of yeast, but brewers of lambic beers leave things up to chance. Belgian lambic beers are left in open vats where wild yeast and bacterias are allowed to take up residence. Once the fermentation process begins, the beer is stored in barrels and left to age for up to three years.

I have a little trouble finding them locally, but occasionally luck out. I love the Frambois (raspberry) and Peche (peach).

I also love an Elderflower Collins with St. Germaine.

Ingredients

• 1.5 oz Gin
• 1 oz Lemon juice
• 0.5 oz St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
• 2 oz Elderflower Tonic Water
• 3 oz Soda Water
• Lemon slice

I have quite a few different liquors in my house since we often want to try something new but don't drink sufficient volume to finish off what we went up buying. We used to be able to reduce the quantity by entertaining, but haven't done that as much since 2019.

We have the same problem.

Or like Sue, we have a drink on vaca., then buy everything to make it and never do (Pisco sour, I'm looking at you).

I also have a lot of junk left from when cooking club had a geography theme and I made Singapore Slings (and Eton Mess). Lot of ingredients in a Singapore Sling, I tell you.

in an effort to support local restaurants, we bought a few cocktail making kits. some came with full size bottles. for one of those, we wound up not liking the liquor -- a particularly floral gin. we're stuck with it forever, unless we can find somebody to take it off our hands. we also have too many tiny bottles of weird bitters we'll probably never use again. whoops!

Mtn, if you ever find out what to do with a bottle of Pisco, please post here. I have one taking up more real estate than it is worth…right next to the bottle of pear liqueur that I needed 2 Tblsps for a cookbook club dessert next to the bottle of gin we bought to support a local distillery 😝 and on and on. You know what I don’t have? A bottle of St. Germaine! Can’t find it anywhere. When I made the Bichon Frises for my cookbook club, I had to use airplane size bottles!

That's why I think bar trucks that visited neighborhoods like the ice cream truck offering fru fru cocktails would be a great idea. And there would be no worries about the patrons drinking and driving home at least . . . Bars did do truck visits (also including food) to one of my friend's suburban Lancaster neighborhoods during the pandemic last summer. Not sure if that was a one time exception or if it could legally be a thing . . . I know they have traveling bars on the NJ beaches . . .

I'm always trying to parse the best alcoholic bang for my buck, weighing quality, flexibility, and in my case, irritability. I usually only had vodka on hand, as it has the least amines for urinary tract and headaches, but now whiskey and brandy are supposedly the least irritating to the gut, along with various expensive aperitifs. I wish I could afford a good pear brandy, it would be an awesome mixer. It hits all my notes except cost . . . at one time I investigated pear wine for the same reason . . . now too many calories on both . . .

I have way more alcohol than i will drink in my lifetime.. and I haven't been all that eager to entertain (not just because of the pandemic). What I have none of.. Gin. I can't take gin or tonic. Maybe because of a bad experience in college.. and maybe because I just don't care for either. I lean most heavily to bourbons, vodka and tequila.. but not a surprise since they are my favs.

in the first summer of the pandemic, my son participated in a play festival. Normally there is a party for the finalists, but they had to do it remote via zoom. They provided the finalists with a themed zoom background, and a swag bag, and a recipe for the “official cocktail”. DS is not really a drinker so I provided the goods: a jigger, shaker, strainer, cocktail glasses, themed napkins, and the bottles he’d need. I couldn’t find airline bottles for them! I think he made one or two cocktails, he finally received from his GF a bar cart two years later to put everything on in his studio apartment.

I don't use a bar cart because we have too much booze. We use part of the china hutch to house high ball glasses and most of the brown stuff. I have a wine bar that I use to store liqueurs and clears. I don't use the wine portion of the wine bar for anything because I'm too snobby to store my wine at room temp. While shopping for a perfect wine fridge, I have all my wine stored in my dd's old bedroom with the heat off lol.

I'm so jealous of the home bar above!!!

I so miss those old days when friends would come over and I'd get them a drink. Any type of drink. Now mind you, my friends and I never were big wild drinkers, but we would drink and socialize, mostly beer and wine but sometimes certain simple cocktails. Nowdays it's "No thanks, clashes with my medication." "No thanks, I'm on a diet." "No thanks, I had to quit drinking due to . . . . fill in the blank medical condition." "No thanks, it puts me right to sleep." "No thanks, it gives me heartburn." "No thanks, we have to drive home (not like we'll just sleep over on the floor like the old days . . . )" and the list goes on.

It's not too difficult to keep some citrusy sodas for spritzers or highballs in the summer, albeit boring. Winter is a little more difficult, because the warm drinks are high calorie.