I have a lot of dreams about the house that I want to one day own. 

I spend a lot of my time fantasising about the interior design, the layout, and the location. 

One thing I really want is a beautiful and stylish cocktail bar, where I can put together equally beautiful and stylish cocktails for all my sophisticated and intelligent friends. 

First I need to plan how to trick sophisticated and intelligent people into being my friends, but then I need to put together a collection of bottles that taste good but, more importantly, look stunning.

My first selection of bottles for my imaginary cocktail cabinet would be...

Gin

Although I am not particularly bothered about gin (I know, I know, it is an insult to alcohol to even say it…), a bottle of The London Gin No1 would make me very happy indeed. It is classic in design, would look great in my industrial brick living room, and also apparently tastes really nice. Gorgeous.

Vodka

Vodka has to be in the cocktail cabinet somewhere, so it is a good job that there are quite so many beautiful vodka brands out there. My particular favourite is the industrial Heavy Water brand, but if you want something more classically elegant a bottle of Belvedere or Finlandia Vodka should do you proud.

Armagnac

You also need to have some more obscure spirits on your very expensive fantasy cocktail cabinet. This is a really good chance to buy some beautiful and unique bottles of alcohol that you may never actually have any reason to use. For me, an ornate and over-the-top Armagnac would hit the button nicely!

Colours

Don’t forget your coloured spirits and mixers either – so that you can make those cocktails as beautiful as the bottles that they came from. Briottet blue is probably the most elegant on the market, but it is worth bearing in mind Monin syrups for their classic and slightly traditional styling.

Champagne

Finally, make sure to have some champagnes in the mix. As a complete luddite I would choose pretty bottle above actual content, but you probably want to find a happy medium between the two. That said, a gold champagne bottle is pretty bloody decadent, and this pewter Armand de Brignac may just tick all of the boxes!

Main image via Ingorrr's Flickr