Bottles & Barware Back on Display

Imagine James Bond, shaking — never stirring — a perfect martini within arm’s reach of a luscious lovely. Think of Nick and Nora Charles, the urbane, 1930s crime-solving socialites, quaffing champagne or brandy at all hours. And recall those “Sex and the City” vixens imbibing cosmopolitans in countless Manhattan hot spots.

Alcohol chic has been a recurring theme in our culture, glamorized and demonized by turns. These days it is finding expression again in new lines of furniture and accessories aimed at our inner bartender or barfly. From inventive, condo-scale folding bars and serving carts to grand armoires styled for storing wine, spirits and glassware, the furniture industry is clearly trying to save us from uncorking bottles and mixing libations over the kitchen sink.

“Is this the cocktail generation or what?” asks Caroline Hipple, president of the Storehouse furniture chain, which offers several models of home bars. “This whole glam sort of persona is really manifesting itself in ways to entertain, a yearning for the ’50s Rat Pack lifestyle.”

Yet many consumers have genuine ambivalence about setting up a highly visible shrine to alcohol in the home. Because drinking is freighted with issues of substance abuse, health, morality and parenting — to name a few — finding a place to store liquor is different from finding a spot on the shelf for soup.

“A lot of it is lifestyle related,” says Kim Davis of Alexandria, Va., the mother of two teenagers and head of the Parents Council of Washington, which represents 28,000 families of children in private schools. “When I was first married, my husband and I had a bar cart and hard liquor for mixed drinks. Then we went through a stage with beer and wine.” These days, their home is virtually dry.

“I got rid of it all as a safety precaution, for us as parents and for the children who come in and out of our home,” says Davis. “I wanted to set an example that you can live a healthy, happy, fun, interesting life without spirits. If you have it sitting up on a counter, it’s just a temptation. Until they are older, I will just err on the side of being responsible.”

There is also the issue of keeping alcohol in view if a family member has a drinking problem.

“I think what the parents do themselves in relation to alcohol consumption is more important than how it is displayed,” says clinical psychologist Patricia Dalton of Washington, who counsels families, couples and individuals.

Dalton keeps her spirits “in a high cupboard that’s not locked,” just as she did when her grown children were very young. “I think you have to be careful about any substance they could get into that they don’t understand. But certainly families with histories of alcoholism need to think it through more.”

And there are purely aesthetic considerations. Some people like the urbane look of bottles and gleaming glassware lined up on a cart or console. Others consider it dust-catching or downright tacky.

“My husband is a real neatnik and likes a very sparse environment,” says Storehouse’s Hipple. “So it was a nod to his aesthetic to keep liquor in my butler’s pantry, in a cabinet under the sink of the wet bar area. The wine storage is also a bit obscured. I did think about that consciously.”

Silver Spring, Md., designer Deborah Wiener has found that the decision to expose or conceal “depends on how the couples entertain and how they feel about serving drinks to guests.”

One of her clients, who enjoys cocktails and has three children under the age of 8, bought a Pottery Barn liquor cabinet-bar combination, with interior shelves fitted for storage and doors that close to hide everything. “The bottles, which aren’t so attractive, are inside. But on the top she has a beautiful tray and decanters filled with liquor. It’s in her living room and it looks very pretty.”

Wiener places herself “at the other end of the spectrum. I have a little bit of liquor and it’s on the top shelf of my closet. It’s not because my 13-year-old shouldn’t see it or know about it. But it’s food in my house, not booze, that gets top billing.”

Geography and tradition also determine the prominence given to a bar and its contents. In some cultures, notes New York research psychologist Michael Cohen, an impressive display of alcohol is considered perfectly acceptable and “aspirational,” because top brands advertise affluence. “But in other cultures it would be considered a little crude, a form of conspicuous consumption.”

Romance writer Sophia Nash, who spent part of her girlhood in France, designed the bar in her Potomac home for visual drama. The back wall is mirrored and the glass shelves hold a collection of 19th-century French decanters,

“We have five different kinds of pastis, champagne, Scotch, so guests don’t have to feel uncomfortable asking for what is not there. The only design flaw is that the decanters are so high up. When we entertain I often just pull them down before guests arrive,” Nash says.

Phil Haney, executive vice president of Stanley Furniture Co., in Stanleytown, Va. — which has unveiled six upscale home bars in the past year and a half — had trouble finding a wet bar built into many of the large homes he looked at around the Stanley complex in Greensboro, N.C.

Haney also found that in more conservative parts of the country, particularly the South, there are still dry counties. Even consumers who drink at home “are looking to make it less evident a part of their entertaining. I think they worry over being judged.”

Fortunately, Haney owns an 18th-century English bar he found a few years back in an Atlanta antiques shop, which he still uses to great effect — and which Stanley later copied for its debut bar.

Whatever the variables, the furniture industry clearly believes that mutant martinis, retro cocktails and climbing vodka sales are here to stay, at least for a while.

“There is definitely an increased interest in bars, coming on for about two years,” says Jackie Hirschhaut, spokeswoman for the American Home Furnishings Alliance in High Point, N.C. “It started out with a wide range of wine-related furniture, a wood-topped console with a wrought-iron rack that was maybe 18 inches wide, as a little accent piece for five to seven bottles.” Today, she notes, a number of furniture makers sell bars that are 5 and 6 feet long or tall.

A quick glimpse at holiday catalogues, advertising circulars and store windows attests to this trend, from national chains such as World Market to small, local establishments. A recent Hold Everything catalog cover featured a couple at a tall, wooden bar topped by a cocktail shaker, soda siphon, bottles, glasses, swizzle sticks, even maraschino cherries. Pottery Barn is offering several pieces of wine and liquor storage pieces on its glossy pages. The Bombay Company has a swanky cabinet that is completely mirrored.

“A lot of ours are flashy; they go well in a contemporary space, lofts or industrial-type units,” says Urban Essentials co-owner Deborah Martens. Examples are a swing-out, circular glass version with an attached round table or a small, collapsible metal drinks trolley.

Martha Stewart, ever attuned to trends, launched her first bar this season for Bernhardt Furniture. “It has very rich double doors almost like an armoire, which are probably 5 or 6 inches deep, lined with barware and a mirrored space for presentation,” says Hirschhaut. “And there is a lockable cabinet that could hold the alcohol in case you wanted to keep it from teenagers or children.”