Raise the bar

Home bars are the in thing now. Gargi Gupta talks to owners and designers to find out what to look for when buying one.

A home bar, in these days of rising alcohol consumption and increasing incomes, is no longer a luxury. As more of us entertain friends, colleagues and business associates at home, serving drinks to loosen tongues and get into a convivial mood, the bar becomes the life of a party. A bar is also practical furniture, becoming the place where you can store all your bottles, glasses and other paraphernalia, and, very important, lock it up. No wonder many furniture brands now offer a range of home bar units, in various sizes and across various price points.

Chartered accountant Ravojit Singh Gill picked up one from Evok, the home interiors brand from the Hindware group, around a year ago when he was doing up his duplex apartment in Gurgaon, paying around Rs 30,000. In solid rose mahogany, the bar is styled like a trunk that opens out with the doors fixed with racks for additional storage space.

The unit occupies the landing on the upper level, done up as a cosy masculine break out area with couches and a leather rug on the floor. Compact yet commodious, it houses Gill’s quite extensive collection of tipples — vodka, gin, rum, some wine and numerous blended whiskies and single malts, including two Famous Grouse bottles that bear his name on the label: “Famous Grouse Ravjot” and “Famous Grouse Gill”. The goblets go into slots, there are shelves for the glasses, soda dispensers and peg measures, and drawers for the stirrers and other knick-knacks. Even the brand merchandise — a wood model of Gilbert the Grouse, a miniature cask from McDowell’s Signature and others that Gill seems to have a penchant for — find a place on the counter top. If the unit has a drawback, it is only that the racks aren’t wide enough to fit bottles any thicker than Johnnie Walker Black Lavel. So the slightly thicker Famous Grouse bottles have to be kept in a separate cupboard nearby.

This is something that Mayuri Aggarwal, who heads a non-profit organisation, was very particular about when she went bar unit-shopping around eight months ago. She finally bought a leather and solid wood bar unit from Portsidecafe, leather designer Bobby Aggarwal’s furniture studio. The drawers in this bar have flexible storage for bottles of different sizes. It’s a large unit, around eight feet long, and solid, with a raised counter to prop your drink and a steel rail round the bottom to rest your feet. It takes pride of place right at the entrance of the Aggarwals’ large drawing room, its far end fitting into the hollow formed by the underside of the stairs. “It makes use of this space, which would otherwise be wasted,” says Aggarwal. She also bought four leather bar stools, which took the price of the bar to around Rs 2 lakh.

So what should you be looking for when buying a home bar unit? “It depends on how much space you have and whether you want it to store all your bottles,” says Kanika Hora, interior designer for Idus Furnitures which has a range of affordable home bars. “If you don’t have much space then a smaller piece with clean lines would fit in.”

Rolly Gupta, interior designer and owner of high-end designer store House of Raro, recommends that “before investing in a bar you must first understand who will be making the drinks. If it is a bartender or house help then you don’t need anything elaborate.” Older people, too, she feels are not very comfortable with the idea of going to fetch their drink. As for the younger lot, Gupta has found, that they go in for multiple pieces — an elaborate one and a smaller one while entertaining a few friends.

The upshot, of course, is that drinking is no longer just the point; it is the drama and pomp that goes with it that gives it an added sheen.