Liqueur

Liqueurs are your after-dinner moments and the entire range available on Bottle Stop can be delivered direct to your door. We will guarantee you the lowest price across our entire range of alcohol including our spirits range of gin, vodka, whiskey, rum, brandy, and tequila and mezcals, as well as the lowest price on beer and cider. Our range of beer includes Australian beer favourites as well as a host of boutique and artisanal producers from around the world and here at home. If you find anything on our website available to purchase for a lower price than we have it for, then well price match that lower price and sell it you for that. Thats a guarantee too.

So, what do you know about liqueurs and where they all come from? You might, or might not, be surprised to learn that the origins of all of your favourite liqueurs are owed to the medical industry. In the Middle Ages and for a few hundred years after that, being a physician didnt require much more than access to any education at all, the ability to read, your own private chemistry set up at home and a lot of curiosity and pomposity. Alcoholic beverages have existed for thousands and thousands of years and humans worked out how to drink them fairly quickly, but spirits arent quite as old. It wasnt until the Middle Ages when the idea of distillation came into being and this process allowed the concertation of certain liquors to form spirits.

The distillation process required a still usually copper because thats excellent at removing foul tasting sulphurs and some heat and that was pretty much it. By heating a fermented product to boiling point, the water in your product evaporated and the ethyl alcohol dripped down a cooler tube to form a concentrate of both the potency and the flavours of whatever fermented product you were distilling. Given that it was early chemistry, physicians and scientists were usually the ones doing the distilling and the spirits they began to create had very high concentrations of alcohol which made them, to medieval scientists at least, seem almost magical. What was even better was the fact that some of them tasted amazing.

Brandy was a big hit early on and called by its French creators the water of life. It was believed to be strengthening and fortifying but what most certainly proved to be was highly intoxicating. Its amazing how great you feel when your perceptions of reality are a little skewed and you just want to make friends with everyone and sing your favourite songs loudly.

Liqueurs are flavoured spirits. Once the medieval boffins had struck on spirits and how good they could taste, they started making them taste even better by experimenting with a bunch of herbal additives, fruit essences, cremes, bitters and anything else they could get their hands on. The result is a full gamut of amazingly sweet and intense liqueurs perfect for adding to your favourite cocktails, drinking neat or over ice. Liqueurs are about intensifying flavours so what youre looking for in a liqueur is a concentration of your favourite flavours.

Youve probably had a nip of Baileys Irish Cream at some point or another. This is a classic example of a liqueur made to be the sweet treat at the end of an excellent dinner. You can drink this liqueur straight over ice, neat or in an Irish coffee or hot chocolate. Creamy and sweet, thick and delicious, Baileys is a cream whiskey with a luxurious feeling on the tongue. You can even mix it with your favourite Irish whiskey and drop the shot in a glass of Guinness for a truly authentic Gaelic treat.

Fruit fans have a lot to choose from when it comes to locating a liqueur for your curated tastes. Well start with triple sec and orange liqueurs. Triple sec, or originally triple sec, is made from orange peel and can be drunk neat but more often than not finds itself inside other famous cocktails like margaritas, sangria, a Long Island Iced Tea, and a Cosmopolitan. It was created in France although its precise origin isnt exactly known and is still pretty hotly debated. The debate is likely because Cointreau, another orange liqueur, was created around the same time and one of them would prefer to be the oldest because that probably makes them seem more prestigious. As an appreciator of fine orange liqueurs, the history isnt all that important. Its the taste that matters and these both taste amazing.

If youre the adventurous type and you want to test your cocktail taste sensations then why not try your own passionfruit mojito with a silver rum, fresh lime juice, a ripe passion fruit, club soda, a teaspoon of sugar and a dash of orange liqueur.

The French really knew what they were on about when it came to distilling spirits and youll find most of the most well-known and prestigious liqueurs owing their original creation to French producers. Chambord is another French liqueur with excellent heritage. They offer a black raspberry liqueur in a stunning bottle. The signature taste combines black currant and cherry fruitiness with Madagascan vanilla bean and XO cognac to produce the perfect taste profile for all extraordinary cocktails.

Schnapps, as a general rule, is not technically a liqueur and is actually considered a distilled spirit or a fruit brandy but its often included in this category and for good reason. A peach schnapps is best enjoyed in your favourite cocktails as is apple, strawberry and butterscotch schnapps.

St. Germain Elderflower liqueur is another perfect cocktail maker containing some beautifully light flavours like pear, peach and grapefruit. Its perfect in a gimlet with gin, lime juice and garnished with a fresh slice of cucumber.

Hazelnut liqueur like Frangelico lends itself equally well to both creamy cocktails and fizzy refreshing ones as well. The Frizzante uses Frangelico, fresh lime juice and soda water with plenty of ice to generate a cool, sweet pick-me-up for almost any afternoon. The Nutty Irishman is a combination of Frangelico and Baileys in a shot glass with the cream on top.

Kahlua is the coffee liqueur of choice for the signature Black and White Russian cocktail combinations. This richly flavoured liqueur is a dark and musky brown and through the coffee flavours come buttery notes of roasted chestnut as well.

Sambuca is liquorice liqueur and the black version contains red fruit notes with the liquorice while the white version is a concentration of green anise and a collection of other herbs.

Amaretto is the Italian liqueur at the heart of the world-famous Amaretto Sour. To make this youll need fresh lemon juice, pasteurised egg white and bitters. Serve over ice with a garnish of lemon slice and a maraschino cherry.

Campari is a technically a type of bitters and is noted for its vibrant red colour and can be mixed with soda water for a clean and simple summer drink or added to a various range of summery cocktails.

How long do liqueurs last?

When it comes to everything, the nose knows. Liqueurs usually have a shelf life of about 12 months after they have been opened but if you sniff anything suspicious smelling when you pop the lid off to mix yourself a drink, trust your nose and order a new bottle of your favourite liqueur. The most notable exceptions to the rough guide 12 month rule is Baileys. Youd think because it was a cream liqueur youd be thinking you get less than a year. Not so. Baileys is the only cream liqueur that will guarantee its taste for 2 years either stored in the fridge or not.

How do you store liqueurs?

Always store your liqueur in a cool, dark place away from direct sunlight. The same rule should be followed for all of your drinking liquor.

Did we whet your appetite yet? Yes, we thought so. The rule of liqueurs is about taste and what you like to taste because the flavours that you enjoy are typically concentrated in your chosen liqueur to deliver a punch of complex tasting notes. This is why theyre so good in cocktails where you can combine them with more simple and neutral flavours, and theyll pop just like theyre supposed to.

Get creative with your liqueurs and develop a rich and complex collection to be readily drawn on to impress your guests, for cocktail evenings, for cold winter nights when warming hot chocolates need a little extra to penetrate the bones and for sharing after delicious dinners. Let us know what you like and what youre looking to explore. Well build a personalised shopping experience for you which includes suggestions based on your likes.

Bottle Stop

Whatever you love to drink, you'll find it available to order online at Bottle Stop and conveniently delivered to your door anywhere in Australia. If it's the best beer from your favourite producers or boutique operations carefully crafting their own signature tastes, you'll find it at Bottle Stop. If you're a wine drinker, browse our extensive selection of wineries, varietals and blends. Our selection of spirits and liqueurs include the big name producers that everybody knows as loves as well as tasty varieties sourced from the finest producing regions around the world.

Our entire range of alcohol is available to order online for the lowest prices. We guarantee it. We don't set our prices; we just match the lowest ones on offer found anywhere in Australia. If you find our stock listed for a lower price anywhere else, then we'll match it. We also offer online-only prices that no one else can match across all of your favourites.

We are home to Australia's largest collections of craft and boutique producers which means that our range of beer, wine, spirits and liqueurs include selections plucked from the finest producers tinkering away quietly, developing the best craft beers, the smoothest whisky, in both local and far-off places that the big name alcohol distributors have never heard of. If you let us know what you like to drink, then we can personalise your shopping experience on Bottle Stop. We'll suggest recommendations that we know you'll love based on what we're drinking and loving too.

We are always open so you can enjoy ordering online 24/7. Delivery covers all of Australia with expected arrivals in the capital cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane within 3 to 5 business days. We are always looking to improve our delivery options and are constantly improving arrival times in more capital cities so you can get the best tasting beverages that you love delivered even faster.