The Liquor Cabinet greets us with a simple and spacious design led by a rather big title and a barely visible slogan aptly saying "The Imbibed Authority.". Call me ignorant but I had to google "imbibed", and it basically means "absorbed" (as in absorbed beverage).

This is a new site, still in development, and the review should be slanted accordingly, or in other words, be kind. :) So let's try to be helpful and constructive.

The header could use some polish, starting with an already alluded visibility of the slogan text and the size of the title. Visibility can be easily improved by adjusting the color of either the slogan text or site's background (or both) to allow for a greater contrast. The title's size isn't necessarily an issue, but does seem a little basic. Unless some other design elements are added it could, for example, be written in a little less standard font, possibly in form of an image to avoid browser font rendering issues.

The horizontal menu seems slightly too far away from the rest of the content below. Halving that distance to at least be equal to the distance between the left and right columns could make the site look overall neater. Alternatively, the available space could be filled with an additional horizontal bar that could hold the main menu with links currently available in the topmost sidebar block (the bar list). In that case the bar list block can be removed leaving the search bar on top.

The main left column acts as an introduction to the site and does the job in a plain simple way. Pretty much only suggestion I can make without going on an entirely new design tangent of my own would be to make that photo of Mansinthe centered.

All this said, design as it currently stands reflects a web site that's just getting started in it's simplest and most basic form. As such it just works and naturally, it's not cluttered nor hard to read. Observations and suggestions made are about as much as can be said without basically instructing a complete design job. The rating thus reflects the functional and aesthetic quality of the design as it currently stands, but does take into account it's very basic nature and shortcomings.

Design rating: 6/10

Focus:

Just coming to the site it's clear it is about alcoholic beverages, that is, liquors. However it isn't immediately entirely clear what about liquors is being offered here. The introductory text lists "different areas" of the site without specifying their exact nature and purpose. Most that I could conclude so far is that it is a web site presenting a number of liquors by type and name and defining what they are, or in other words, a library of information about liquors. Judging from the text on the homepage it may also serve as a place where liquor tasting events will be announced, like the currently announced Mansinthe tasting event.

A new visitor shouldn't be left with any doubts, however, so it would be a good idea to make the introduction a little more exact about the purpose of the site, it's mission. That said, since it is still in development and it does give obvious hints as to its purpose and no conflicting topics exist the rating can be fairly positive.

Focus rating: 7/10

Content:

Just like it's design and focus, the content aspect of the site also reflects it's state as a "work in progress" site. Aside from the introductory text and a single tasting event announcement, predominant content is the library of various liquors and their descriptions. There are plenty of them, but the descriptions are very short and basic.

Still, and especially for a liquor newbie, even as much content as there is can be pretty useful and educational so it's a good start. I suggest expanding further on that. Perhaps have a few links below the description of every liquor, to other places where more information can be found about them (such as, for example, wikipedia).

Also, couple of pages gave a "resource cannot be found" error, but that may be because those pages haven't been written yet.

Content rating: 7/10