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.

Dirty Strawberry Rocks Rita (Original Recipe)

 

There's something about enjoying an excellent Margarita done on the cheap. Strong, flavorful and packed with citrus and salt--just what the body craves. It's easy to adjust your recipe slightly and have a very different result. Here I've substituted a different flavor for the triple sec. For this recipe, I used a homemade moonshine infused with strawberries and sweetened with sugar syrup.

That's not Mother's Moonshine, whatever that is. I used the bottle to store my own strawberry moonshine for this drink. 

• 2 oz. white tequila (Sauza 100% Blue Agave use)
• 1 oz. lime juice
• 1/2 oz. strawberry moonshine
• 1 tsp. sugar syrup
• sea salt and lime slice for garnish.

Begin buy coating the rim of an Old Fashioned glass with sea salt. Do this by rubbing a lime slice along the rim to wet it and dipping it into a saucer of coarse sea salt. Fill a shaker with the remaining ingredients and shake. Pour into the glass and garnish with the leftover slice of lime. 

Old Orchard Sour

One expects apples not strawberries in an old orchard. Even so, this sour is fizzy and fruity with strawberry liqueur standing in for plain sugar.

I feel like a fizzy drink needs a light tasting whiskey like Seagram's 7 Crown. You don't need your whiskey and soda to taste heavy or overly spicy. Now that I think of it, an Irish whiskey would do equally well. And it is the citrus and strawberry liqueur that really stand out here. My homemade strawberry liqueur is rum-based from Vitae distillery in Charlottesville, VA.

• 2 oz. blended whiskey (Seagram's 7 Crown used)
• 1/2 oz. lemon juice
• 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 1 tsp. sugar syrup
• 1 tsp. strawberry liqueur (homemade used)
• club soda
• berry and citrus garnishes

Combine liquid ingredients except soda in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled Collins glass full of fresh ice. Top with soda and stir. Garnish with fruit.

Commodore #1

I've made a Commodore Cocktail before: that bourbon and creme de cacao drink with lemon juice. I've never heard of a Commodore #1, and that implies that there's a #2 and beyond, right?

I did this one because I made this strawberry liqueur from Vitae Platinum Rum, sugar and fresh strawberries. It was a good idea. MurLarkey Heritage Whiskey provides a spicy base for this fruity drink. You notice the wine cask and rapidly aged oak of the heritage while the strawberry provides a fresh sweetness. Overall, though, this is a very juicy drink and you might not notice that it is predominately orange juice, so bitters do a lot to keep it interesting and balanced.

• 1 1/2 oz. whiskey (MurLarkey Heritage used)
• 1/2 oz strawberry liqueur (homemade used)
• 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 2 oz. orange juice
• dash orange bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Maria's Manhattan

A few lucky coincidences made this cocktail especially good. One is that I made my strawberry liqueur from Vitae's platinum rum and fresh (underripe strawberries.) The other is that I used MurLarkey Heritage whiskey instead of a lighter blended whiskey. The ingredient that makes this cocktail different from any other Manhattan, strawberry liqueur, also has the potential to cover over the richness of the other ingredients that define a Manhattan's profile.

MurLarkey's Heritage is a rich and well-aged corn whiskey with hints of smoke and spice cake. It isn't bourbon, however, and tastes closer to Irish whiskey except for its high proof and old country whiskey style. My strawberry liqueur is a combination of strawberries infused in rum and a cooked strawberry simple syrup. It's delicious, and with a rich vermouth, supplies hints of fresh fruit as well as a cooked jam.

• 1 1/2 oz. whiskey (MurLarkey Heritage used)
• 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
• 1/2 oz. strawberry liqueur (homemade version used)

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a strawberry if you have one.

Ladbroke Road Cocktail

This bright fizzy drink is going for everything English from strawberries to gin. The British love their gin! What better way to enjoy it than with fresh fruit and a long refreshing soda drink. Ladbroke probably refers to Ladbroke Grove tube station in London, a posh area near Notting Hill. Or else it might be the village of Ladbroke in Warwickshire, but I tend to think the former as it is better known.

A note on the bottle pictured left: the label doesn't correspond with a product that I know of. This was an image I printed, perhaps of a now defunct producer of flavored moonshines. What you see here is a Vitae rum distillery bottle with the printed label on top. I have the recipe for this here.

I'm finding that I enjoy these liqueurs I'm making at home more than store-bought ingredients. Often you pay too much for them or the quality is poor compared to what you can make in your kitchen if you have the fresh fruit and good booze.

• 1 1/2 oz. gin (MurLarkey ImaGination used)
• 1 oz. homemade strawberry liqueur made with Vitae Platinum rum 
• dash triple sec
• club soda 
• lemon peel
• whole strawberry

Combine liquid ingredients except soda in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a Collins glass full of fresh ice. Top with soda and stir gently. Garnish with the strawberry and lemon twist.

Summer Fizz (and DIY Strawberry Liqueur)

This is a fun drink that I imagine would be great for outdoor sipping in the summer. If only it was warm enough this spring...and we weren't social distancing. Sadly, no pool drinks in the foreseeable future. 

You can use any whiskey you choose, and I recommend Irish or Canadian for their lightness and the fact that they are blended for swift drinking. The heavy portion of grapefruit juice needs a sweet cordial for balance. That's where strawberry liqueur comes in.

There are a number of strawberry flavored cordials on the market. I quickly made this rum-based one using Vitae's platinum rum infused with strawberries while I folded in some strawberry syrup I made on the stove.

DIY Strawberry Liqueur
To make this take a cup of any white rum and soak six cored strawberries in it for three days. Take an

additional six berries and add them to 1/2 cup of white sugar and water. Heat these to boil and stir until the sugar dissolves. Mash the berries while they are hot to make a jam and allow it to cool. Strain the fruit from the syrup and fold it into the strawberry rum. Bottle it in something that seals. It should keep for six months refrigerated.

Now for the cocktail:

• 1 1/2 oz. blended whiskey (Proper Twelve used)
• 3 oz. grapefruit juice
• 1 tsp. strawberry liqueur (Homemade Vitae based used)
• club soda

Combine all ingredients except club soda in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a highball glass full of fresh ice. Top with soda and stir gently.