For my MxMo XIX theme in September of last year I chose ‘Fizz’ generally because I thought it’d be fun and narrowly because I have trouble denying myself any reason to have a drink topped with sparkling wine, champagne, tonic water or club soda. Or hell, any with champagne as a base for that matter. So recently when my glorious wife shoved a stack of papers in my face with a great number of drinks she felt I needed to make for her to try post-haste I had no trouble taking that honey-do on when I saw how many involved the bubbly.

Among the many she found were the winners of last year’s Tales of the Cocktails competition; the Crescent City Blossom, the Starfish Cooler, and the Sparkling Sakepom as well as several from the Food Network and Martha Stewart websites including the Laughter in the Rain¹ , the Killer Mango Champagne Cocktail, the Grand Champagne Cocktail, and the Frizzante Mojito. Now, many of these require more work than I’m immediately willing to put in sight unseen² but several of these I could try with little pre-work and had the right ingredients ready, and willing, to go. We tried the Starfish Cooler, the Crescent City Blossom, and the Frizzante Mojito. Each had their considerable charms, and none fell flat or disappointed.

Crescent City Blossom

• 2 1/2 oz Moet & Chandon White Star
• 1 oz Plymouth Gin
• 1 oz St-Germain Elderflower Liqueur
• 1/4 oz Stirrings Blood Orange Bitters

Combine all ingredients in an ice filled mixing glass. Stir until well chilled and strain into a Champagne glass. Top with Moët & Chandon White Star. Garnish with a thin, 8 inch orange peel spiral.

This drink is by Martin Cate of the Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge in Alameda, CA and my hat’s off to him. When looking at this recipe for the first time my eyes popped at the high volume of St-Germain. As I mentioned in my last post this has been a problematic ingredient for me that has only come together perfectly well when put with champagne. This drink changed that. Everything else in the drink is designed to tone that syrupy sweetness down and tame the liqueur into a floral accent instead of an overwhelming, but well-meaning, brute.

A couple of notes on the other ingredients though. I think it’s important to use Plymouth Gin specifically here as most London Dry gins will bring a cymbal crash of juniper down on this drink that may not be entirely helpful. You might get away with another non-London Dry such as Citadelle, Van Gogh, or Hendrick’s but I’d stick with the Plymouth. Also, don’t mess with the bitters. Stirrings’ bitters are a whole different beast than your Fee Brothers or Regan’s No. 6 Orange Bitters and replacing the Stirrings’ with a full 1/4 oz of one them is suicide.

This drink really impressed me and I loved how balanced it came across without sacrificing depth (my main complaint against a lot of Collins/Fizz/Mojito-style drinks). The proportions were perfect for a standard champagne flute and I’m definitely going to be back to this one again and again. I don’t think the Moet & Chandon is particularly important, and certainly not as important as the type of gin and bitters, but my oh my it sure was nice.

Starfish Cooler

• 1 oz Moet & Chandon White Star
• 1 oz Lemoncello
• 1 oz PAMA Pomegranate Liqueur
• 1 oz Unsweetened Iced Tea
• 1/2 oz Simple Syrup

Muddle orange slice and mint leaf in a collins glass. Combine all ingredients.

This drink was submitted by Stacey Smith of GW Fins in New Orleans and it won the competition in last year’s competition. I’m going to give Stacey the benefit of the doubt and assume that there’s ice involved in there somewhere. Now, in buildingthis drink and looking at my collins glasses there was no way 4 1/2 oz. of ingredients were going to look anything this side of pathetic in my 12oz glasses. So, from my Gin & Tonic experience I knew that this volume, with ice, would fill a double old-fashioned glass nicely and it certainly did. So, if your collins glass are anything like mine they’re hell to muddle in and poorly suitedd to this drink. But, logistics aside, how was it?

This is a nice low-octane drink that brings rarely paired ingredients together and lets them play. I love the use of Unsweetned Iced Tea as, for me, it was the ingredient that really stood in the center and made this unique. The PAMA, Lemoncello, and champagne all do their thing but none of them really have enough character to make the drink completely sing. My wife and mother-in-law really enjoy this and it held up well when I made a pitcher of them for the Easter brunch we served ourselves. A good mid-morning to early-afternoon starter, but, all in all, too sweet for my tastes. I dialed back the simple syrup and upped the champagne quotient and it was less tacky but lost some of the iced tea punch that made it special. So, a couple of notes on this one, for me, are to ensure the tea is nice and strong and pull back on the simple syrup; between the PAMA and Limoncello there’s plenty of sweet to go around in this one. I also went with a Lemoncello that has a sharper lemon rind tang to it, versus a sweet lemon juice focus, and it also helped. So, if you have the luxury of selection, go with a drier one. Also, you should click the link above to see the picture on the Tales of the Cocktail site, it’s quite pretty and significantly superior to mine.

Frizzante Mojito

• 1 1/2 oz light rum (preferably Cruzan)
• 1 oz simple syrup
• 3/4 oz fresh lime juice
• 6 fresh mint leaves
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
• 2 oz champagne or prosecco (chilled)

Muddle together mint, lime juice, and simple syrup to release mint oils in a mixing glass. Add rum and bitters; shake over ice. Strain into a cocktail glass or coupe; top with Champagne.

This starts as a fairly standard mojito with the addition of Angostura bitters and champagne. However, the uptick in simple syrup, alarming to me at first, turns out to bring all this together to retain the spirit of the mojito despite the heavy addition of champagne. This is really refreshing, as you’d expect, and the addition of champagne and bitters really provides some complexity that a straightforward mojito lacks.

An interesting thing about this drink though; I’ve made two pitchers of this for parties and whatnot since initially trying it and in my first attempt grossly overcalculated the amount of bitters a pitcher would call for (we’re talking about orders of magnitude 10x or more here) and managed to cut it down by increasing the remaining ingredients so it was only 3-4x as much called for and, shockingly, it was a huge success. Naturally I took the Julia Child route, acted as if the recipe were spot-on, and never made mention of my mishap to my guests until long afterwards, but the second pitcher, made to spec, wasn’t as good in my opinion. It was good, but upping the bitters even further seemed to take this to another level. Worth a shot at least should you try it.

As a side note, a cat named Allen Katz³ provided this recipe to Martha Stewart’s site along with the Laughter in the Rain cocktail above and I’ve yet to run into a recipe of his that hasn’t rocked my socks off. And, in googling him the instant I’m typing this I’ve come to find out there’s a fine reason for that. Apparently he knows what the hell he’s doing and we should all damned well pay attention when he recommends something. Well done, sir, well done. I can’t wait until Tales of the Cocktail 2008 to meet or see all these fine people.

1. this is another drink that uses cucumber in its preparation, like the Flying Cucumber, to good effect; bit too sweet for me though [↩]
2. I’m looking at you Killer Mango thingy [↩]
3. yuk yuk [↩]