Mucho Picchu (Death & Co.)

 

This cocktail name sounds like a bar inside joke--a pun on Machu Picchu. I don't get the reference, but it's ingredients are sound, as are most of the champagne cocktails in the Death & Co. recipe book. Unusual for a champagne cocktail, the juice is grapefruit and there are no bitters other than the maraschino, which is more sweet than bitter. The grapefruit twist is both attractive and aromatic with the bubbles coming up all around. 

This is one of the better ways to use Pisco (a grape spirit itself) by putting it in a sparkling wine. The number of ingredients is small and easy to prepare. All that is required is an open bottle of Chandon. 

• 1 1/2 oz. pisco (Capel used)
• 1/4 oz. Luxardo maraschino liqueur
• 1/2 oz. grapefruit juice
• 1/2 oz. simple syrup
• dry champagne (Chandon used)
• grapefruit twist garnish

Combine all liquid ingredients except champagne in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled champagne flute and top with champagne. Twist grapefruit zest over the drink and drop it in. 

Miss Behavin' (Death & Co. Recipe)

 

I'm going back to Death & Co.'s amazing champagne cocktail list because every one of their recipes is a good idea and works well with champagne.

This time I'm using Moet and Chandon champagne with two American spirits to make this champagne drink taste like ripe pears. Catoctin Creek distillery makes this awesome pear brandy that has a whiff of ripe pears because it is distilled from fermented pear juice. It also has the nose of a calvados or fruit eau de vie. Laird's Applejack 86 is just a burst of apple flavor throughout because it comes from cider. The two read as pears when you add the bread-like bubbles of real champagne and some lemon juice.

• 3/4 oz. pear brandy (Catoctin Creak used)
• 3/4 oz. Laird's Applejack 86
• 3/4 oz. lemon juice
• 1 oz. simple syrup
• dry champagne
• 1 anju pear slice garnish

Combine liquid ingredients except champagne with ice in a shaker. Shake and strain into a chilled champagne flute and top with champagne (take care to add it slowly because it reacts to the lemon juice and can bubble over easily.) Garnish with the anju pear slice.

Doc Daneeka Royale (Death & Co. Recipe)

What is up with the Catch-22 reference in the name? This is the famous fictional doctor who gives name to the insanity catch underpinning the novel. Maybe this is a drink for paranoids, or maybe it is a balm for paranoia. Either way, it was an interesting take on a French 75 with maple syrup used as the sweetener and grapefruit bitters to provide a bitter lifting notes. 

This cocktail is an all-around fruity and bitter drink that is far more complex than the French 75. A squeezed grapefruit peel adds even more citrus bitterness on the nose, and dry sparkling wine (Aria cava) and herbal gin (MurLarkey ImaGination) do not let up on dry and spicy notes. The direction the flavors take on your tongue is up, only up. Sourness and tang give way to a bubbly tingle that isn't solely produced by the sparkling wine. What a fun and dangerous drink!

• 2 oz. gin (MurLarkey Imagination used)
• 1/2 oz. lemon juice
• 1/2 oz grade B maple syrup
• 1 dash bittermen's hopped grapefruit bitters (Fee Brothers' grapefruit and celery bitters used)
• dry champagne (Aria cava used)
• 1 grapefruit coin

Combine all liquid ingredients except for champagne in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled champagne flute or coupe and top with champagne. Squeeze the grapefruit zest coin over the glass and discard. 

Dick and Jane (Death & Co. Recipe)

 

More champagne cocktails! I've been looking forward to using hibiscus flowers packed in syrup in a cocktail, and this cocktail presented itself as a likely candidate. It calls for hibiscus syrup, which provides sweetness and this lovely red color. The flowers themselves are chewy and sweet like brandied cherries, so I decided to use one as a garnish. 

There's something for everyone in this champagne cocktail. ImaGination gin and Peychaud's bitters for those New Orleans French 75 drinkers and St-Germain and hibiscus for a nice floral drink with bubbly. The nice thing is the recipe is not overly sweet and the color and garnish suggestion makes it look more royal than a Kir. 

• 1 1/2 oz. gin (MurLarkey ImaGination used)
• 1/2 oz. St-Germain
• 1/2 oz. lemon juice
• 1/2 oz. hibiscus syrup
• 2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
• dry champagne
• 1 long, thin lemon twist (and optional hibiscus flower) garnishes

Combine all ingredients except champagne and garnishes in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Curl lemon twist and drape it over the glass. 

Lilly's Cartel (Death & Co. Recipe)

 

Perhaps one of the largest category of cocktail in Death & Co.'s book is the champagne section. There are just so many cocktails you can make with champagne or sparkling wine. I'm using Cava, which is dry but doesn't have the same bread-like notes in the nose we associate with a good dry champagne. But a good champagne is worth appreciating by itself, so as long as your sparkling wine isn't sweet, most of these drinks are worth doing with sparkling wine or champagne. 

Blood orange juice is a rare ingredient that is seasonal. It also varies in sweetness a lot between oranges, so it isn't always a reliable juice. I fully understand why blood oranges are more interesting to work with than naval oranges, but I can't expect to get them like I can any other kind of orange. 

That is why I chose to use half naval orange juice and my blood orange infused spirit. This liquor is an infusion of blood orange peels as well as their juices in vodka that is sweetened by blood orange syrup made from the juice. It is really intense in its particular flavor, and after mixing it with naval orange juice, you only notice the blood orange. 

Other minor substitutes include using Don Ciccio & Figli Ambrosia for Aperol. 

• 1 oz. pisco (Capel pisco used)
• 3/4 oz. Aperol (Ambrosia used)
• 3/4 oz. blood orange juice (naval orange juice and blood orange liquor used)
• 1/4 oz. lemon juice
• 1/2 oz. simple syrup (scant 1/2 oz. used)
• dry champagne (Aria cava used)

Combine all ingredients except for champagne in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled champagne flute and top with champagne. 

Champagne Cocktails: Elysee Palace and Lord Baltimore's Cup

 

Special occasions call for impressive champagne cocktails. A good champagne cocktail is balanced, not overly sweet or spicy; it should be elegant, colorful, effervescent and most of all, strong. Both of these cocktail achieve this in very different ways. The quintessentially French Elysee Palace is a blushing, bubbling flute glass with rich berry flavors and cognac. Lord Baltamore, the English governor of the Maryland colony, is a chunky chalice full of manly rye and bitters. 

The nice thing about offering a champagne cocktail during a party is that it makes use of the dry sparkling wine that is already open and being passed around. The rest of the recipes are not complicated and really only amount to sprinkling in a few ingredients to alter the champagne. 

Here are the recipes to these two cocktails. As usual, feel free to make substitutions when it comes to syrups, liqueurs and sparkling wine as needed to pull them off.

For instance, I used sparkling wine that is as dry as Champagne--Californian, not Italian, which runs the risk of being too sweet. I made my own raspberry syrup out of brandy, sugar, and fresh raspberries rather than buy a bottle of Chambord. And because I don't have framboise, (which does have a little fizz of its own) I fell back on strawberry-infused rum, hoping that the sparkling wine would take up the slack of the bubbles. 

        Elysee Palace

• 1 oz. cognac (Martel single distillery used)
• 1/2 oz. raspberry liqueur (homemade raspberry brandy used)
• 1/2 tsp. framboise (homemade strawberry liqueur used)
• brut champagne  

Combine cognac and raspberry liqueur in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a champagne flute and top with brut champagne.

         Lord Baltimore's Cup

• 1/2 oz. sugar syrup to taste  
• 1 oz. rye (Rittenhouse)
  
• brut champagne
• several dashes Angostura bitters
• several dashes Pernod (Ricard used)

Combine rye, sugar and bitters in a wine goblet. Add ice cubes (I prefer cracked ice for drinks with floats) and stir. Float Pernod (or pastis like Ricard) on top.

Kentucky Champagne Cup (Original Recipe)

 

This is a bourbon drink that is based on the Champagne Cocktail. Normally this would be enjoyed in a coup glass with no ice. But what if you want more champagne? 

Peaches are extremely important to this recipe for some reason. I'm going to say that it is because of summer weather and the desire to have fresh fruit with bubbles and bourbon. Anyway, for a simple solution to the persistent question, "what will I drink next?" This cocktail is an easy--no shaking--recipe you build in the glass.

• 1 oz. bourbon (Evan Williams Bonded used)
• 1/2 oz. peach whiskey (Bird Dog used)
• several dashes aromatic bitters (Hella used)
• champagne or sparkling wine (Wine Cube Bubbles used)
• peach slice

Add bitters and whiskies to a large balloon wine goblet full of ice and stir to chill and combine. Fill with sparkling wine so that the ice floats and garnish with the peach slice.

Ric-O-Chet

Alright, champagne cocktail drinkers--here is another beauty! The Ric-O-Chet is a lot like a Death In The Afternoon, in that it is a sparkling cocktail with a ton of herbal flavored and grape-based spirits in it. It's almost a drink designed to display the color of the spirits and present an interesting form of glassware for consuming something that pretty much tastes like absinthe. It will also kick your butt and make you quite tired if you make it part of your day drinking routine.

The recipe calls for cognac, and there is almost no reason to use a high quality spirit. But since I didn't have any cheap cognac, I opted for my pricey armagnac by Larressingle. I'd like to say that this was a good move, but a lot of the subtlety of armagnac is lost behind the anise and licorice of Ricard. If anything, the cognac is there to spread that flavor around and make the Ricard a little more rich.

One key to this drink (and any restaurant bartender who tries this by reducing the liquor content by half in order to be sold legally in most states) is to build the drink with the cognac and Ricard in the glass first and add ice to chill it. This allows the herbs in the Ricard to express out and create a cloudy caramel visual effect. Remove the ice with a spoon and top with the champagne and stir.

• 1 oz. cognac (Larressingle armagnac used)
• 1 1/2 oz. Ricard
• sparkling wine or champagne

Add Ricard and cognac to a chilled champagne flute and stir to chill. Remove the ice with a spoon and top with sparkling wine or champagne and stir gently. 

Imperial Kir

Now that I'm on the subject of Kirs, let me introduce you to this baddie! It is a Kir on steroids (or Kirsh, actually) and it combines two fruit spirits with bubbles and a lot of crushed ice. The Kirshwasser--not a small portion, here--is probably what promotes the Kir Royale to an emperor. If not that, though, it must be the massive size of this drink. It's like it is designed to wipe out any drinker in one cocktail.

Kirschwasser--the traditional stuff from Germany, like this Kammer Kirsch--is very high proof. It tastes like dry fruit brandy, and I love how that dryness and fruit comes through what is normally a sweet black current pie of a cocktail. Crushed ice makes the whole think unbelievably cold compared to the often improperly-served warm Kir (when you don't chill the cassis and just put it in the warm glass and top with champagne and hope for the best.) It turns out that the Imperial Kir is a drink that is enjoyable when you take your time with it and let it dilute a little. At this strength and size, you almost have to!

• 2 oz. creme de cassis (G. E Massenez used)
• 1 oz. kirschwasser (Kammer Kirsch used)
• champagne or sparkling wine

Combine creme de cassis ingredients with crushed ice in a shaker or blender. Shake or blend briefly to combine evenly and pour into a large wine goblet. Top with champagne or sparkling wine and stir gently.

Bubbling Passion

This sparkling wine cocktail is the passionfruit edition of of a Kir Royale! It uses the now extinct la Grande Passion liqueur that Grand Marnier used to make. In this resurected drink, the passionfruit comes through the bubbles even better than cassis, and you can even taste the chocolate notes--not bad for an easy bubbles cocktail.

• 1 1/2 oz. la Grande Passion liqueur
• sparkling wine or champagne
• lemon twist

Pour la Grande Passion into a chilled champagne flute and top with sparkling wine or Champagne. Twist lemon peel over the glass and drop it in.

Champagne Punch

(Photo by Ned Drummond)

This is a reasonably sized punch for a small gathering, and a really good use of sparkling wine and spirits to produce a strong and balanced communal drink. The photo I used is a half portion, so it doesn't fill the bowl completely. But it was the perfect amount for three big drinkers. The full-size punch makes 15 servings.

• 1 cup cognac (Mewkow used)
• 1 cup cherry liqueur (Cherry Heering used)
• 1 cup triple sec (Cointreau used)
• 1/4 cup sugar syrup
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 2 bottles (750 ml.) Champagne or sparkling wine (Korbel brut used)

Combine juice, spirits and sugar in a bowl and refrigerate up to two hours before serving. Fill with large cakes of ice (snack bags filled with water and frozen beforehand are great.) Add Champagne and stir when ready to serve.

Caribbean Champagne

Caribbean Champagne is a rummy sparkling cocktail with banana notes. You can do it with creme de bananes and light rum, but that makes the drink cloudy with sugar and yellow dye. Cruzan banana rum is sweetened and flavored rum that doesn't have any artificial coloring. Skip using light rum and just use the banana rum instead for a clear sparkling wine cocktail with Caribbean appeal.

• 1/2 tsp. light rum
• 1/2 tsp. creme de banana (use a whole tsp. of Cruzan banana rum for simplicity and clarity.)
• champagne or sparkling wine
• banana slice

Add rum and banana liqueur in a chilled champagne flute. Top with champagne and garnish with a banana slice. 

Buddha Punch

This photograph is of Buddha Punch made as a single serving. This is my punch of the week at work and the large batch doesn't look that appealing in a large plastic container. But if you do choose to make this punch, it will come out fine according to the recipe from the New York Bartender's Guide from the 90's, which is for a crowd of about 20 people.

The fun thing about this punch is that it involves, among other things, a sweet wine base and champagne or sparkling wine top. It's pretty much a white wine punch with fizz, but there is a lot going on underneath. There's light rum, cherry brandy, triple sec and orange bitters. It's really a fruity punch!

• 16 oz. sweet white wine like Riesling (Fox Run used)
• 8 oz. light rum
• 8 oz. orange juice
• 4 oz. lemon juice
• 4 oz. triple sec
• 1/2 oz. cherry brandy
• 1/2 oz. sugar syrup
• several dashes orange bitters
• 1 bottle of champagne or sparkling wine
• lime slices

Pour all ingredients except champagne into a large punch bowl and refrigerate. Before serving, add a block of ice, stir and top with champagne.

American Flyer

American Flyer is a champagne cocktail with one of the New World's favorite spirits--rum! In fact, this is pretty much a champagne version of a Daiquiri, an excellent drink in itself. I'm especially fond of how light and citrus-bright the flavor is with a bruit sparkling wine or champagne.

• 1 1/2 oz. light rum
• 1 tbsp. lime juice
• 1/2 tsp. sugar syrup
• champagne or sparkling wine

Combine all ingredients except bubbles in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled champagne flute. Top with sparkling wine or champagne. 

Prince Of Wales

I was afraid I wouldn't be able to enjoy this cocktail until I had the trifecta of brandy, Madeira and champagne. But I had them all at once in this drink at work last night. Madeira is a fortified wine (sherry) made on the Portugese island of Madeira, It is strong and nutty with a dry wine flavor. It loves being mixed with brandy (cognac please) and champagne, as it is in Prince of Wales.

The primary flavor of this cocktail is orange, however, due to the presence of an orange slice garnish and curacao. The effect is a fizzy sangria that sneaks up on you with round oakiness from cognac and Madeira.

• 1 oz. brandy (cognac)
• 1 oz. Madeira
• 1/2 oz. white curacao
• 3-5 dashes Angostura bitters
• champagne or sparkling wine
• orange slice

Combine all ingredients except champagne and orange slice in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled wine glass. Top with champagne and garnish with the orange slice.