Home bars are there Simple for entertainment

Press, 20 April 1979, Page 16

Home bars are there Simple for entertainment

Home bars have increased in popularity in recent years, and they add variety to home enter tainment. Men may still cluster around the bar, but the old Kiwi party habit of women in one corner, men in another is by no means as common as it used to be. Cocktail cabinets used

to be the main repositories of refreshments in homes, and while they are still in wide use, bars are taking over. One advantage of a bar is that all the drinks can be stored in one place easily accessible to the host, and served at the bar. This saves the host or hostess roaming around the room seeing if glasses are empty and then relaying messages that a whiskey is wanted in one corner with ice and water, a brandy in another with ginger ale. There used to be a belief that bars were for the luxurious homes of the wealthy. Certainly you can spend a lot of money on a bar, but the home handyman can also spend very little on materials and

come up with a piece of furniture that graces a room. An example is shown in one photograph in this feature. Plan your bar so that it does not dominate a room, make sure that it has an easy-to-clean and durable top and is generally of materials from which stains and spiit drinks or water can be removed easily, and you are ready to stock it.

Again, there used to exist a belief that one needed a great outlay of money to stock a household bar, but this is not so. It can be done gradually and the cost spread.

Maurice Hunter, a wine' expert, shows elsewhere in this feature how a wine “cellar” can be built up for an outlay of about $42, and these days no host’s bar and stocks would be regarded as complete without some variety of wines.

When it comes to spirits and liqueurs the new bar owner should proceed cautiously and at a purchasing pace that suits his pocket.

It is no good buying a large quantity of one line just because it i,s. cheap. You might not like it and have to palm it off on to unsuspecting guests, who might not like it either. If you are not familiar with a particular drink or brand it is wise to try one bottle first. Then if you like it, and particularly if it is at a bargain price, that is the time to lay in a reasonable stock. The many outlets avail-

able — wine and spirit merchants who seli at wholesale rates. hotel bottle stores many of which have wholesale prices for bulk purchases, the “cut-price” bottle stores and the wine shops which are well spread throughout the suburbs — all have some members of the staff who are well-ver-sed in the merits of their products. They are the people from whom you should seek advice when you feel you need it. If you are fortunate enough to have some idle cash, then you cannot go

wrong by buying a large quantity of your favourite drinks — except for wines not noted for keeping — because one thing appears sure: Prices will never go down.

Apart from entertaining others, a home bar has an attraction for the owner in these days of a continuous campaign against the drinking driven

Another attraction is that many new home bar owners find that once they have built up their basic stock, they probably drink less than when their normal stock was a bottle of whisky, another of gin and a dozen of beer in the refrigerator. Now, with a wide

choice in their home, they do not have the same temptation to “have another one” because the bottle is getting low.