14 ideas from the bar & cocktail area of The Kitchen. Nothing is sold here — pick anything up and it opens a pre-filled search at the retailer.
The bar cart is the one piece of furniture in the house that exists purely to make an ordinary evening feel deliberate, which is a fair description of a good gift as well.
It suits a particular moment more than a particular person: a first proper flat, a housewarming, a couple who have started having people round. The cart itself is the statement version. The things that stand on it — a shaker set, a decanter and glasses, a smoking kit — are the more giftable end, because each one is a complete small ritual that can be opened and used the same evening.
Two notes. Anything involving alcohol is worth a thought about the recipient, and the equipment here works perfectly well for someone who does not drink at all — a shaker makes a better non-alcoholic drink than a glass and a spoon does. And a decanter is decorative as much as functional; buy it for someone whose home you have actually seen.
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Bar Cart
A bar cart is furniture rather than equipment, and it is the piece that turns a corner of a room into somewhere deliberate. That makes it a big, visible, occasion-sized gift — a housewarming, a first proper flat, a milestone birthday — and one you should only buy for a home you have actually stood in, because it has to fit somewhere and match something. The wheels are not decorative. The whole appeal is that it comes out when people are round and goes back against the wall when they leave.
Cocktail Shaker Kit
A shaker set is the complete-in-one-box gift, which is exactly what you want for someone who has expressed vague interest in making drinks and owns none of the equipment. It is also genuinely fun to open, which not everything here is. A cobbler shaker — the three-piece with the built-in strainer — is the right one for a beginner, because it needs no other tools. And it is worth saying that all of this works just as well for non-alcoholic drinks; a shaken citrus and soda is a properly good thing and the equipment does not care.
Whiskey Decanter
A decanter is the most decorative object in this room and the one closest to being a piece of sculpture. That is its appeal and its risk: it lives on display, so it has to suit the room, and you should only buy one for a home you have seen. Practically, decanting does nothing for spirits — a whisky is the same in the bottle — so this is honestly an aesthetic gift, and there is nothing wrong with that. The versions that come with matching glasses are the better present, because they arrive as a complete set rather than a vessel with nothing to pour into.
Cocktail Smoker Kit
A cocktail smoker is a novelty in the best sense: it does one theatrical thing, it does it well, and it is the object at the party that everybody wants a turn with. It suits someone who already makes drinks and has run out of things to buy for it — a second or third gift in this category rather than a first. It comes with wood chips and usually a torch, though torches are sometimes sold separately and it is worth checking, since a smoker without one is an ornament. It works on a plain old-fashioned and on an alcohol-free equivalent alike.
Wine Rack
A wine rack is the storage gift that solves a problem people have stopped noticing: bottles standing on a counter, in a cupboard, or in the box they arrived in. Wall-mounted is the version that reads as decoration and suits a small kitchen; freestanding holds more and moves house more easily. Bottles are meant to lie on their side, which keeps the cork from drying — any rack worth buying does this by default. Six to twelve bottles is the sensible size for a home that is not a cellar.
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