What's in Your Cabinet?
Metablogging August 11th, 2007Jeffrey Morgenthaler had a nice post and started a bit if a meme for me when he posed this fine question, ‘What’s In My Liquor Cabinet‘. I’ve been meaning to take stock in mine for quite awhile to see where I’m underutilized, overutilized, and just plain lacking. And rather than spam his comments section with my list, I present it to you here:
Gins:
London Dry Style:
- Bombay
- Bombay Sapphire
- Tanqueray
- Gordon’s
- Old Raj
Dutch/Genever:
- Leyden’s
- Damrak
- Van Gogh
- Boomsma Oude
Other:
- Plymouth
- Hendrick’s
- Tanqueray Rangpur
- Seagram’s Lime Twisted
- Leopold’s
Vodka:
- Svedka
- Chopin
- Ulyanovsk Stolichnaya
- Skyy Melon, Citrus, and Spiced
- Absolut Vanilla and Peach
- Smirnoff Orange and Apple
- Player’s Extreme Cherry Infused
- Bak’s Zubrowka (Bison Grass Flavored)
Tequila:
- Jose Cuervo Gold
- 1800 Silver
- Partida (sampler)
Rum/Cachaca:
- Bacardi White
- Bacardi 8
- Cruzan Blackstrap
- Cruzan Light Rum
- Mount Gay Eclipse
- Myer’s Dark Rum
- Appleton Special
- Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum, Parrot Bay Coconut, and Parrot Bay Mango
- Bacardi 151
- Cruzan Pineapple and Banana
- Pitu Cachaca
- Ypioca Toucano
Whiskey:
- Maker’s Mark
- Evan Williams
- Jack Daniel’s
- Jim Beam Rye
Scotch/Irish:
- Buchanan’s 18 year
- Chivas Regal 12 year
- Glenrothe’s 1992
- Oban 14 year
- Bushmill’s Irish Whiskey
Liqueurs:
Orange:
- Grand Marnier
- Parfait Amour
- Gran Gala
- Cointreau
- Triple Sec (HW & Mr. Boston)
- Orange/Blue Curacao (Dekuyper’s)
Nut:
- Creme de Noyaux
- Amaretto (Disarrano and di Amore)1
- Frangelico
- Nocello
Coffee/Chocolate:
- Starbuck’s Coffee Liqueur
- Kahlua
- Creme de Cacao
- Godiva Chocolate Liqueur
Cream:
- Carolan’s Irish Cream
- Bailey’s Irish Cream
- Bailey’s Mint Irish Cream
- Amarula
Fruit:
- Apple Pucker
- Pama Pomegranate Liqueur
- Apricot Brandy
- Blackberry Brandy
- Cherry Brandy
- Berentzen’s Apple Schnapps
- Peach Schnapps
- Blue Island Pucker
- Razzmatazz
- Chambord
- Massenz Creme de Framboise
- Maraschino (Stock’s)
- Kirschwasser
- Heering
- Creme de Cassis
Brandies/Cognac:
- Calvados Cardinale
- Slivovitz
- Laird’s Applejack
- Presidente Brandy and Solera Brandy
- Hennessy V.S.
- Remy Martin Grand Cru V.S.
- Napoleon Brandy V.S.
Miscellaneous:
- Tuaca
- Galliano
- Limoncello (Gioia Luisa and homemade)
- Limecello (homemade)
- St. Germain Elderflower
- Creme de Menthe
- Absente
- Chartreuse (Green)
- Pimm’s No. 1
- Metaxa Ouzo
- Sloe Gin
- Southern Comfort
Fortified Wines/Vermouth:
- Dubonnet (Rouge)
- Lillet (Blanc)
- Tribuno Sweet Vermouth
- Noilly Prat Sweet Vermouth
- Martini & Rossi Dry Vermouth
- Noval 10 year Tawny Port
Bitters:
- Fee Brother’s Mint
- Fee Brother’s Peach
- Regan’s No. 6 Orange
- Angostura
- Peychaud’s
- Campari
- Underberg
Syrups, Mixers, and Other Flavorings:
- Falernum (homemade)
- Rose’s Lime Juice
- Finest Call Lime Juice
- Rose’s Grenadine
- Grenadine (homemade – cold process)
- Stirring’s Ginger Syrup
- Coco Loco Coconut Cream
- Torani Raspberry Syrup
- Torani Cherry Syrup
- Simple Syrup
- Tincture of Lavender
- Collins Orgeat
- Reed’s Ginger Beer
- Club soda
- Stirring’s Tonic Water
More or less I take from this that I’m woefully short-handed when it comes to Tequila, that I need to upgrade and diversify my stock of Rums if I ever want to make 1/4 of the recipes in Beachbum Berry’s books (thanks again, Rick), and that I’m stuck with a lot of ingredients from before my conversion to cocktailian understanding (I mean, wtf, Blue Island pucker?!). Any thoughts, trends, or ideas you have are greatly appreciated. And, you’re welcome to come over and have a drink, anytime. Just don’t touch the Old Raj, he gets cranky.
- yes, I know it’s not technically a nut liqueur [↩]
Holy cats! For somebody who claims to have only recently been bitten by the cocktail bug, you sure have hit the ground running! Over what length of time did you accumulate most of those bottles? My wife starts getting ornery when more than one or two bottles per month start showing up in the house. Have you gotten many bottles sent to you because of the drink blogging?
I couldn’t possibly have much in the way of suggestions, except that you might want to pick up some Gosling’s Black Seal rum, which works as a good alternative to Myer’s dark. You could snag some Martinique rum for making authentic Mai Tai’s, too (Rhum St. James). I may have missed it, but I don’t see any Pisco on the list, either.
One last suggestion: Consider fortifying the support structure of that shelf in the first picture. That sucker looks like it’s ready to give out!
-Andy S.
PS: My list is posted on Jeffrey’s comments section.
This is so embarrassing. Everyone has a bigger collection than I do.
Maybe I drink too much? Nothing seems to last that long around here…
Andy: I’ll head over there and check out your stash. I’ve always taken pride in the quality of my liquor cabinet, but it’s only relatively recently I’ve put it to proper and proud use. Rums are definitely an area I have trouble with; I need Demerara, Martinque, and some others to round out my ability to mix the Tiki drinks I’m longing for now that I have Sippin’ Safari. I’ve only recently gained access to being able to buy Capel Pisco so I need to go ahead and make the purchase.
Jeffrey: Bah, you have a few things I’d kill for and one of the main reasons I have to stock so much is that so much is a pain in the ass to get here that I backstock everything and have a better selection than almost every bar in town here. I’m afraid the ABLE Commission is going to come knocking someday.
Wow Gabriel, that’s quite a collection! I will admit to being a bit of a bottle fetishist – I love seeing a large collection of exotic spirits and cool looking bottles. I will have to get around to cataloguing mine at some point, though unfortunately it pales in comparison to yours.
Jeffrey’s post encouraged me to finally catalog my cabinet, too. I look at it every day, but there’s something about seeing all those bottles in print that really makes you stand back and wonder, isn’t there?
Nice list, Marleigh!
And Jay, I would like to see some of your more interesting bottles. I never really take that into consideration (and as much as I love Hendrick’s not being able to see through without a Klieg light drives me nutz) though the Boomsma bottle is really interesting.
Same to you, Gabriel! That’s an impressive catalog, especially considering your geographic isolation, so far as liquor availability goes.
How do you like the ginger syrup, and what do you use it in? A bar here made me a Moscow Mule that used ginger syrup to augment the ginger ale they mixed it with, and it was actually quite good, but I haven’t seen much of it otherwise.
[...] resist making my MxMo entry this month a Tiki cocktail. The trick is to find which one I have the ingredients for and to make sure I don’t try to tackle anything that makes 1: break my new camera in [...]
You know, I haven’t found a good use for the ginger syrup yet. Some of Beachbum Berry’s tiki cocktails call for it and his boks provide a homemade recipe but I’m uncertain how well it can be substituted by the Stirrings product. So, for now, it pretty much sits there. Any ideas?
I haven’t done anything with ginger syrup, but I noticed that it pops up in a few places in “Raising the Bar.” He gives a recipe for homemade ginger syrup, but if yours is anything like the rest of the Stirrings line, it’s probably a fair facsimile.
I’ll dig through it and see if I can find some recipes for you.
[...] the past few weeks several cocktail blogs have been posting lists of all the alcohol they have in their collection. Despite the jealousy this [...]
You guys might be interested in a group I started on flickr:
What’s in your liquor cabinet?
http://www.flickr.com/groups/985291@N21/
Enjoy!