Needless to say there are many spirit based liqueurs and these are the first category of liqueurs, part of the 6 liqueur types you will need to have in your cocktail collection at home.
Liqueurs give you a big hit of flavour generally and are sweet additions to your cocktail.
Whisky based liqueurs
Many liqueurs are based on whisky unsurprisingly. Although whisky isn’t a common ingredient in great cocktails, especially scotch, the liqueur versions work well as they are sweeter and softer. Drambuie and Glayva are based on scotch. Southern Comfort is bourbon based although we’re told it is made with peaches. There are others such as Irish Mist based on Irish whiskey. Drambuie is one of my top 5 favourite liqueurs. It goes well in the easy-to-make Rusty Nail.
Rum based liqueurs
Rum is a popular spirit and a useful base for cocktails. Tia Maria, Kahlua and Malibu are all flavoured but based on rum. The 2 darker liqueurs with their predominant coffee work well in cocktails with tequila I find and in the Black Russian with vodka of course.
Best of the rest
Other spirits do lend themselves to being liqueur bases but I don’t have many of these. So, I suggest you don’t need them either. Patron XO Cafe is a fantastic liqueur : tequila based – again with coffee flavour. It has been out of production for a while but it looks like the public outcry has led to it’s return. Although it’s silly money at the moment.