Displays

Start with the spot. The LED bottle shelves in 60, 90 and 120 cm are made for a back wall: you screw them in place and the bottles stand in a single row, lit from below. If you want to present on the bar itself, the illuminated bottle displays with two or three tiers are more practical, because they show the bottles stepping upwards instead of one behind the other. The version with a remote control lets you adjust the colour and the light level without crawling in behind the bar. For tastings, choose wood: the tasting display caddy carries glasses and bottle together, and the 34 cm tasting board sets out a row of glasses at a fixed distance from each other. For the shop floor there is a presentation column and a cardboard display from the Speakeasy line, in separate versions for glassware and for cocktail tools.

A display works best when you let it tell one story. On an illuminated shelf, put the bottles of a single category side by side, your entire gin range for instance, so a guest sees at a glance what there is to choose from. Mix everything together and it turns into wallpaper. At a tasting, use the tasting board to fix the order: the lightest glass on the left, the heaviest on the right, and your guest tastes from left to right. Behind the bar it pays not to put the bottles you reach for most often in the display, because you pull the arrangement apart every time. Keep those on the speed rail and save the visible spot for the bottles that sell a Negroni or an Old Fashioned.

The illuminated shelves and tiered displays are built from acrylic with an LED strip along the underside. Acrylic scratches more easily than glass, so wipe it with a soft microfibre cloth and not with a scouring pad or an alcohol-based cleaner, because that will leave the surface milky over time. Keep live parts dry: wipe up spilled syrup straight away, before it creeps in under the shelf. The wooden tasting board and caddy are not dishwasher safe. Wipe them with a damp cloth and let them dry flat, so the wood does not warp. A cardboard display is meant for temporary promotions and lasts one season.

If you are after light and not a structure, the bar lighting sits separately. If you work on location, the serving trolleys and mobile bars are the starting point, because they let you move your whole setup in one go. The full overview of the tools behind the tap is on the bar tools page, and the glasses you present at a tasting are with the whiskey glasses.