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Building a home bar

Not a list of specific bottles to buy — prices and what's in stock vary too much by state for that to be honest. Instead: the order that actually makes sense, and real links to see what six bottles cost near you right now.

Buy for versatility before you buy for taste

The mistake most first home bars make is buying three whiskies before owning a single bottle of anything else. A base of six different spirits covers vastly more actual drinks than six whiskies, even if whisky is what you like best. Depth comes later — breadth is what makes a home bar usable on a random Tuesday.

The six bottles, in buying order

1
A blended whisky or Indian single malt
covers whisky-soda, a highball, and neat drinking
See current prices, cheapest first →
2
A London Dry gin
gin and tonic, a Martini, a Negroni if you also have vermouth and Campari
See current prices, cheapest first →
3
A white rum
mojitos, daiquiris, rum and coke
See current prices, cheapest first →
4
A plain vodka
the most neutral base — mixes with almost anything you already have
See current prices, cheapest first →
5
A triple sec or orange liqueur
the one ingredient that shows up across the most classic cocktails
See current prices, cheapest first →
6
A VSOP brandy
sipping on its own, and it rounds out a few classic cocktails too
See current prices, cheapest first →

Those six links pull live from our own price records, sorted lowest first — not a fixed number we wrote once and forgot about.

What you don't need yet

Skip cask-strength, limited editions, and anything described as a "collector's bottle" until you have opinions of your own about the six categories above. A ₹500 mixing whisky and a ₹15,000 single malt do genuinely different jobs — buying the expensive one first just means you're nervous about opening it.

Once the base six are in place, our taste quiz and the compare tool are built for the next decision — a specific upgrade within a category you already know you like.

Written by the Pegpedia editorial team. This is general information, not a recommendation to drink. Please drink within the law in your state.