When setting up a home bar for mixing cocktails, getting the right spirits is just the first step. To make the range of classic cocktails that form the canon and to start experimenting on your own, you’ll need a range of liqueurs to combine those spirits with and some additional extras, like bitters, to add an interesting twist to your drinks.
While there are essential spirits that most cocktail experts agree belong in a home bar, the area of liqueurs has fewer rules. Many of these are optional based on your personal preferences, and many can be enjoyed sipped as well as in cocktails. Often, the best way to start collecting liqueurs for your home bar is simply to buy one bottle at a time based on what you need for your favorite drinks. However, if you’re looking for a list as a starting point then it can help to know what some of the most commonly used options are, and that’s what we’re sharing here.
It’s worth noting that there isn’t a hard and fast rule on what the difference between a spirit and a liqueur is. Generally speaking, liqueur refers to drinks that are sweeter than spirits and are often in the range of 20-30% abv compared to spirits, which are often 40% abv or higher. We already talked about Cointreau and Chartreuse in our essential spirits post, and those are technically liqueurs as well. So here we’ll focus on the broader category of things that aren’t essential spirits or non-alcoholic mixers but which you will want to try out in your cocktails.
Campari
Bright red, powerfully bitter, and a real love it or loathe it flavor, Campari is to my mind the ketchup of the home bar. A little dash adds a bracing note of depth to all sorts of drinks, and it’s the backbone of classics like the Negroni or the Americano. As most of us have only ever experienced Campari in cocktails, and it’s definitely not appropriate for drinking neat, it’s worth trying just a small sip to understand its flavor profile. It is bitter, but it’s also far sweeter than you would imagine. It’s helpful to understand that if you’re adding Campari to a drink, you may not need to add any sugar syrup at all unless you have a particularly sweet tooth.
There are other options available for red-colored, bitter liqueurs, but I’ve never found anything to beat the classic.
Bonus extra: Aperol
Best known for its use in the Aperol spritz, Aperol is another bitter liqueur that can be a great addition to your bar. It’s sweeter than Campari, without quite such powerful bitterness, but it has a similar rich taste and bright color. However, it’s not something that you see in many cocktail recipes (though there are a few!), as it’s more commonly drunk with just prosecco and soda water. If you love Aperol spritzes — and let’s be honest, who doesn’t? — then this is an easy addition to the home bar as well.
Vermouth
Vermouth is a fortified wine, meaning it’s a wine with spirits added to take it to a typical abv of between 15 and 20%. While it can be enjoyed on its own (it’s particularly popular in Spain) and is delicious as an aperitif, it’s also commonly used in a wide range of cocktails. You’ll want to have on hand both dry (or white) vermouth for drinks like a martini and sweet (or red) vermouth for those like the Negroni. Rosé and other types of vermouth exist, which you can experiment with, but dry and sweet will cover you for most cocktail needs.
Something that’s important to know about vermouth is that unlike spirits and most liqueurs, it needs to be kept in the fridge once it’s open. If you leave your vermouth out on the side at room temperature, at best, it will lose its flavor and become dusty and bland, and at worst, it will become vinegary and undrinkable. Even in the fridge, it won’t last forever, and you really want to use it all within a month of opening it. So unless you particularly enjoy drinking vermouth neat or you’re making a lot of drinks for a big crowd, you might want to consider getting half-size bottles of vermouth instead of full 750 ml ones so you can drink it before it goes bad.
I like the herbal notes of Dolin’s dry vermouth and the vanilla notes of the Carpano Antica sweet vermouth, but these options can be pricey. If you’re trying to save your budget and just looking for basics that are good enough to use in cocktails, then the standard Martini & Rossi bottles that are widely available in supermarkets and are inexpensive will do the job, too.
St. Germain
This stunning-looking bottle is St Germain, an elderflower liqueur that can be a handy addition to the home bar. It’s heavily floral and heavily sweet, meaning a little goes a long way, and you rarely want to use more than 10 ml of this in a drink, but there’s nothing else quite like it for when you want that sweet, herbal, flowery taste. It’s used in cocktails like the Hugo and is popular added to prosecco, so it’s not an essential but it’s nice to have on hand for your summer drinks.
Amaro
Amaros are a whole category of drink that deserves exploration. Traditionally Italian herbal liqueurs, there are seemingly a million different types and varieties, which have only proliferated as the category has become more popular. Campari and Aperol are both forms of amaro, though those are rarely drunk neat, while many other amaros make wonderful sippers.
Amaros make great after-dinner drinks, drunk simply over ice. But if you like to experiment with your drinks, Amaros offers infinite variety. The flavors range from the rich, almost chocolatey taste of Averna to the fruity sweetness of Montengro to the menthol whack of Fernet Branca Menta. You can combine them with prosecco or sub them in for Campari to give an entirely new twist on a classic cocktail recipe.
While I’ll warn you from experience that not every combination of amaro works in every drink (the less said about my inexplicable experiments with lager and Montenegro, the better), these are great fun to play with. One of my favorites is Cynar, which is made from artichoke and has an earthy, herbal taste. It makes the delicious and oh so simple Cynar Fizz drink, a staple sipper for me on brisk autumn evenings.
Sweet liqueurs
Another big catch-all group is those liqueurs that are on the sweeter end of an already sweet category. These are to be approached with care when mixing cocktails, as they are so sugary that they can drown out the flavors you’re trying to build up. However, they can also be appealing to a wide range of people who maybe don’t have much experience drinking cocktails or who really dislike the harsh taste of alcohol and specifically want something to cover up that boozy taste. Plus, some are also just fun to drink.
The leader in this regard is amaretto, which is made from apricot kernels but tastes like sweet almonds. It used to be considered a bit tacky and passé, but it experienced a resurgence after legendary bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler invented the amaretto sour, proving that this liqueur can be delicious in craft cocktails when used thoughtfully.
The most common brand, Disaronno, has always done just fine for me but there are other amarettos out there if you feel like exploring.
Other sweet treats that can be useful to stock in the bar are coffee liqueurs like Kahlua, essential for the espresso martini, or the classic Irish cream Bailey’s. These are great poured into black coffee with perhaps a bit of whipped cream on top for a boozy, sweet, sticky version of an adult hot chocolate. If you enjoy this style, you might also like the hazelnut-flavored Frangelico or the fruity and creamy Amarula.
Then there are your more fruity sweet liqueurs, like the raspberry liqueur Chambord (most notable, if I’m being honest, for its gorgeous bottle) and blackberry liqueur, known as crème de cassis. That’s great for a kir royale, to my mind, the king of the pre-dinner drinks. There’s minty crème de menthe and the cherry-based maraschino, used in cocktails like the last word. And there’s limoncello, peach schnapps, or melon liqueur, and on and on.
None of these are essential, and most are likely to be too sweet to appeal to some cocktail enthusiasts. However, as the perfectly balanced amaretto sour recipe shows, with care, this style of liqueur can be used to delicious effect. Pick up an odd bottle now and then and have a play if you’re feeling creative.
Bitters
From the very sweet to the very bitter, the other ingredient that is a must-have in your home bar is at least one bottle of bitters. These powerful liquids are used in small quantities to enhance other flavors within a cocktail, sort of like the salt and pepper of the drinks world, and a few dashes of the correct bitters will really make a drink come alive. They have an effect on the scent as much as the taste of cocktails, as they are typically added last just before the drink is served. When you take a whiff of a cocktail just before it hits your mouth, you’ll experience the subtle but delightful addition that bitters can provide.
The most common type is Angostura bitters. Essential for making an old-fashioned, these bitters have a pungent, deep taste that resembles wood. Add a couple of drops to any kind of sour to add a deep, rich note and more complexity.
Other popular options are orange bitters, frequently added to martinis or negronis, and spicy Peychaud bitters, which have a cinnamon-esque flavor and are used in the Sazerac. Bitters are another category that has seen a bunch of craft options pop up, so there are now versions available of things like chocolate bitters (more like cocoa, and not sweet at all), lavender bitters (a great addition to floral drinks), or my personal favorite, celery bitters. In my house, celery bitters are used in everything from a Bloody Mary to a gin & tonic made with a vegetal gin to add a savory, green note that I can’t get enough of.
Feel free to experiment with bitters however you like, and stock whatever variety appeals to you.
How we chose these home bar liqueurs
While there are pretty universally agreed-upon rules about what types of spirit make up the backbone of the bar, there’s a lot more ambiguity when you look to branch further out into the world of liqueurs. If you haven’t tried a lot of different cocktails before, you might be unsure where to start — and to be honest, even if you have had some of these liqueurs in cocktails, it isn’t always easy to know which particular flavor they added. So trying to learn which liqueurs you’ll enjoy is always going to be a bit of a crap shoot.
The easiest way to build up your home bar with liqueurs is to just buy whatever bottle you need one at a time as you find it called for in recipes. Fortunately, liqueurs are often not too expensive compared to high-end spirits, so you can be a bit more experimental with trying new things as you learn what you like.
One way I love to try out different liqueurs (and to greet guests as they arrive when I’m hosting a party) is by making a round of personalized prosecco cocktails. Stock up the fridge with plenty of prosecco (it doesn’t have to be anything fancy; in fact, cheaper proseccos that don’t have much flavor are kind of ideal here) and for each person in the group, ask them what kind of flavors they like and use that information to choose a liqueur for them. Add a small shot of your chosen liqueur to a champagne glass — just 10 ml is good — and top with prosecco. You can throw in a dash of bitters or a nice garnish if you’re feeling fancy. Everything from Campari to St Germain to peach schnapps works great in this application, and it’s an easy way to sample a liqueur and find out how it plays as a cocktail ingredient — plus, guests seem to have a good time with it.
It’s also worth keeping an eye out for local liqueurs if you travel. There are so many regional specialty liqueurs, which are not only fun to drink and mix but also make a nice memento of a vacation. I love ginja, a sour cherry liqueur from Portugal which is traditionally drunk in shots but which I like to mix with tonic water or to use in a variation on a last word cocktail. France has Suze, Germany has Jägermeister, and Italy seems to have a different type of liqueur in every single town.
There’s really no end to the options available for liqueurs, even if most of them will only find occasional use in cocktails. They’re largely an optional extra but one that is very fun to have on hand in a home bar, particularly if you like experimenting. So don’t feel constrained by rules here — part of the pleasure of building up your own bar is stocking and exploring a wide range of ingredients that appeal to you.
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