Aibu to ask what alcohol you keep at home?

[Tigerpaws57]

Just curious. DH and I only ever drink wine or beer and that (or soft drinks) is what we offer guests. We buy only what we are likely to drink in a week. Maybe buy a couple of bottles of gin or vodka to enjoy over christmas holidays. Talking to colleagues though, it seems most of them maintain a fully-stocked "home bar" with a range of spirits, liquers etc available all year round. So I am wondering, are we the norm or are they? Do most people expect to be offered a wide selection of alcoholic drinks if they visit you?

Pink gin & normal gin. Usually a bottle of wine too. :)

Does pink gin actually taste different?

Few different gins, few different runs, vodka, whisky, Bacardi, champagne, beer and wine. It's our main drinks (gin and rum) and what our regular visitors drink. I hate having people visit and not having their tipple in!

We have a cupboard full. Much of it over 10 years old. Quite a lot of spirits and random liquors my parents used to bring back from holidays. The problem is we don't really drink. I wish my teenagers would drink it on the quiet then I could use the cupboard for some thing else.

A shit ton, we have a full size cupboard in the living room with a full size fridge in it that has beer, champagne and white wine, and then a wine rack that holds about thirty bottles above it, which holds bottles of spirits and wine, plus all the soft drinks in there. We also have a wine rack built into thr kitchen which holds twelve bottles and that's where we store red wine.

We have friends over a lot, so the booze cupboard is very popular, everyone just shoves the booze they bring in there and then help themselves when they wish a drink as the evening progresses, I don't serve drinks and we are all very close, so no need. When less close friends over I do serve from there, and it's very handy.

Wine, beer, vodka, whisky, kahlua, port and whatever weird and wonderful shit we got given for Christmas (and which will probably be given to raffles at some point!).

Red wine as needed for cooking, beer if my brother is coming to visit, other than that nothing. We're pretty much a teetotal house. No one who comes to visit has ever expressed any disappointment at the lack of alcohol.

Lager, cider (real cider and the fruit-flavoured fizzy pop type), wine (lots including sparkling and dessert wine) gin, vodka, cointreau, grand marnier, 43, absinthe, herbal liqueurs from Italy, honey rum, pear brandy, cognac, armagnac, oh I can't even remember what else.

We don't encourage visitors, though. Might offer them a coffee, if they're lucky.

I keep all of the alcohols....and approximately 8 types of gin.

We have some gins and a couple of bottles of weird artisinal rum I got at a food festival last year. Have loads of red wine at the moment (leaving present for DH when he moved companies) and far too much bubbly stuff from a recent milestone birthday.

The above stuff isn't what we'd drink normally, though - if we're having wine with a meal, we'll go out and grab.

I also have various infused gins & vodkas that I've done myself e.g. raspberry gin, rhubarb gin, chilli vodka (my speciality), toffee vodka, orange and cinnamon gin (very Christmassy).

I have a bottle of Creme Caramel, Amaretto, Aldi version of Pimms, Archers pre mixed, blue wkd. We have a little drink most nights but it's normally wine, we buy it as we drink it, so it's not stored away.

Just gin. Anything else and it gets drunk straight away 🤦‍♀️

We have quite a few bottles of wine in the cupboard because my grown up kids keep buying us wine for our birthdays or Christmas, mothers day and fathers day! They build up because usually they are not wines we usually drink.
We have cans of low alcohol lager too...and there's an opened bottle of gin that will be there for ages.

Currently I’ve got... wine (mainly red but some white), prosecco, champagne, several different gins, Bacardi, vodka, pimms, aperol, tia Maria, three different cognacs, ruby port, white port, two different whiskeys, baileys, various bitter, various lagers, various ciders.....

Oh dear...it sounds awful!

We do enjoy a drink but haven’t actually had a drink since Sunday when I had a G&T. I’ve been drinking a fair amount of tonic water without gin though so need to get some more.

Wine, beer, vodka, gin and far too many of the ridiculous liqueurs that taste nice on a warm pretty balcony on holiday but are bloody vile when you get home. We have something green from Mallorca that tastes like sweet grass - what were we thinking?

Bloody loads but as me and dp don't really drink it just sits and accumulates (when people being stuff at dinner parties etc) until Christmas when I then take it to other house parties and leave it there. I'm sure I go get the same bottles back sometimes and the cycle continues. I wouldn't worry about not having enough, surely if you want something different you will just buy as needed

The booze cupboard is very well stocked but seldom used really. Couple of brands of whiskey and gin, vermouth dregs, caramel vodka (flavoured absoluts are in the freezer), triple sec, some fruit flavoured stuff which isn't that great, pimms, jack daniels, and some flavoured syrups. Things we bought for house parties at ours, or gifts.

DH usually will have a beer, and I'll have a wine hence the cupboard stuff lasts for ages.

We always have gin & some kind of mixer, DH's whisky collection and he usually has some beers in as well. We've got a bottle of Amaretto that we've had for a couple of years as well, as it only comes out at Christmas!

Occasionally have wine, martini, aperol, Pimms, Baileys at xmas, Malibu etc.

If people are visiting I'll get wine, beer, prosecco, lemonade, whatever. I'll ask them what they like to drink.

I'd love to have a proper drinks / spirits cupboard, but we just don't drink that much to justify it.

Daren’t have a drink’s cupboard in our house. DH would just work his way through it in secret till it was finished, sometimes filling bottles with water to hide what he’s doing. Either way, there’d be nothing left to offer guests. He’s not an alcoholic, he insists, just drinks in secret so I don’t get upset.He’s tried sticking to 2 a day but can only successfully control his drinking by total abstinence although of course he could stop at 2 if he chose to apparently. Every birthday and Christmas his family buy him bottles of whiskey as a present. I hate them for this. I either need to hide them straight away or he’s finished the bottle within a couple of days. Sometimes we pretend he doesn’t have a drink problem and leave the bottles in full view. That’s where the coloured water trick comes in useful. Drinking is not enjoyable apparently if you can’t keep going till you can’t take any more.

I drink occasionally, although the long term medication I'm on says to avoid alcohol altogether.

I like some wines, and Bailey's/Amarula type liqueurs. I also like fruit ciders, Crabbie's Ginger beer, schnapps, sherry and port.

My OH likes sweet wine, fruit ciders and single malt whisky. He also only drinks occasionally.

Now for my confession:

I seem to have a bit of an obsession with collecting bottles of alcohol, so my collection is pretty large and wide ranging, and includes things that we don't really drink.

I'm a sucker for a good description or unusual bottle too!

Tbf, I was always brought up that you have things availible/cater for guests, but as we don't have very many, my collection just gets bigger!

I have around 130 bottles including:

Kraken spiced rum (loved the bottle and description, but haven't tried it & don't think I'd like it)

Cognac (never tried it)

Brandy

Gin (don't like it)

Flavoured vodkas (again we don't drink vodka, but they sounded nice & others will)

Various fruit liqueurs eg, orange, cherry, raspberry, etc.

About 30 bottles of red, white and rose wines

About 15 bottles of sweet liqueur wines including Tokaji, red and white Muscat, semillon, and eiswein

About 30 bottles of various single malt whiskies (Jura, Glenmorangie, Oban, etc)

Various ports ranging between 10 and 40 years old and various bottles of sherry (probably about 15 bottles altogether)

Malibu

Various bottles of schnapps

Tia Maria (yuck!), Cointreau, Bailey's, Amarula, and various other drinks.

Also I have various ciders, alcoholic ginger beers, some craft beers (for a friend) and wine for cooking.

I'm going to have a party next summer, so I will hopefully use up a lot of it then (and can then start collecting again).

Oh, @Tigerpaws57, no, it wouldn't bother me to only be offered a particular thing (or small selection of things). If there wasn't anything on offer I liked, I'd just drink water or tea!

I wouldn't think anything 'less' of them either. It actually wouldn't cross my mind to worry about out at all. I wouldn't think of it as a lack of choice, or anything at all, really.

littlepleasures I feel you.

We've recently moved so our "everyday" alcohol, i.e. Wine and prosecco has been depleted (as I drank it all to save us moving it!) however, We have at least 4 different types of gin (I don't like it but OH does) and I've actually banned him from buying anymore until he's gone through what's in the kitchen first. Another 4 or so bottles of whisky but that hasn't been touched for a while as "it's a winter drink". Some champagne I've been given for birthdays and moving, a couple of other random spirits picked up from random places. We generally have 3/4 bottles of beer we haven't yet tried floating around and some cider. At the moment just buying prosecco and wine as I fancy it but will re-stock as we get more settled.

If we're having guests round then I'll buy in what I know they like to drink But it generally aligns with the above so I think your selection is fine, especially if your friends know what your usual drinking habits are.

Red and white wine. Occasionally rose, sparkling, dry sherry and port. Cognac or any decent brandy. Scotch whisky. Gin. I rarely drink beer at home - I go to the pub for that.