3 Ways to Make a Cocktail With Champagne (One of Which Is A Daiquiri)

A Champagne Cocktail! A French 75! Also: What to do with flat bubbly.

It’s almost New Year’s Eve. That means it’s time for Champagne. Which means I need to start this newsletter by making a confession: I am not really a Champagne guy. 

Every year, in the week or so before New Year’s Eve, I read up on recommended bottles, head out to the store, and find myself staring at a $50 bottle of grand imperial something-or-other that I will have to drink in a single night or see it go bad. And every year I wonder: Is it really worth it? 

The problem with Champagne isn’t that it’s not good. On the contrary, Champagne is delicious. The sharp, dry, sly sweetness of it, the bubbly, effervescent zest...how could you not like Champagne? 

Even quite inexpensive bottles are festive and fun, if perhaps not so delicate or complex. Nor is the problem that I am constitutionally averse to spending $50 or more on a good bottle of booze: My whiskey rack offers plenty of proof of this. Perhaps too much. 

But an open bottle of whiskey (or cognac, or gin) lasts for years. You can sip and savor it over an extended period of time, at your leisure. Sometimes it beckons. Sometimes you might go months without touching it. 

A bottle of Champagne, in contrast, is a substantial immediate commitment. You open the bottle, and it’s dead the next day. It might not even last an hour or two. You really ought to drink the whole thing that night. 

Sure, you can buy a Champagne stopper to preserve it for an extra evening or two, but it’s still not the same. Champagne is meant to be consumed the day — the hour — it’s opened. The leftover, half-flat bottle in your fridge might have been exceptional two minutes after you popped the cork. A day or two later, it’s barely any better than a half-empty bottle of flat Diet Coke. 

And, if I’m being honest, I like Champagne, but I never quite love it. Not like I appreciate cocktails, anyway. Champagne is fun and enjoyable, but I can never quite take it seriously. This is no knock on those who do; if anything it’s the opposite. It’s a bit of a limitation on my part, one I eventually hope to overcome.

So when New Year’s Eve — our mutually agreed-upon Champagne-drinking holiday — comes around, I have often wondered: Why not just make cocktails? Why not just drink a daiquiri? 

But eventually, I came to a realization, a holiday-appropriate plan that I like to think constitutes a satisfying middle ground: Make Champagne cocktails, and then, with whatever you’ve got left over, make a Champagne-syrup daiquiri. 

The Champagne Cocktail: A Champagne Old Fashioned?

Let’s start with one of the oldest and arguably most essential Champagne-based cocktails of them all, the not-so-creatively named Champagne Cocktail. 

You probably won’t see this on many cocktail bar menus, and it hasn’t been subject to a contemporary revival the way, say, the Old Fashioned has. But it’s a classic all the same, dating back to the mid-1800s, when it was part of the same line of cocktails that eventually produced the drink we now know as Old Fashioned. 

In its early incarnations, the Old Fashioned was just known as a “cocktail.” Initially, this meant whiskey, sugar, and bitters. Over time, the drink became known as the “whiskey cocktail,” as other spirits were substituted for the whiskey. Including, eventually, Champagne.

Common versions of the classic recipe tend to look something like this:

• 3 dashes Angostura bitters

• 1 white sugar cube

• Champagne to top (typically about 4-5 ounces)

On a plate, douse a sugar cube with Angostura bitters until it is fully soaked. Place the bittered sugar cube in a Champagne flute. Top with Champagne. Garnish with a lemon twist. 

Bitters. Sugar. Spirit. Recognize that combo? By now you should.

In the very first edition of this newsletter, I argued that the Old Fashioned was the template that explained, or at least influenced, virtually all other classic cocktails that followed. 

You can see that explicitly in the Champagne Cocktail, which — structurally — is just an Old Fashioned with Champagne instead of whiskey. It doesn’t taste like the same drink,  not even close. But it’s the same idea, born of the same way of thinking about what a cocktail should be. 

If you like cocktails, you should make this drink at least once, if only to understand how the formula plays out with a base ingredient that is very different than whiskey. It’s a bright, light, effervescent drink with a pop of aromatic sweetness rather than the heavy, viscous sipper that is the modern Old Fashioned. 

But because I’m a cocktail drinker much more than a Champagne aficionado, I will suggest three small changes to the traditional formula to make it just a little more cocktail-like in both presentation and taste.

First, use a demerara sugar cube instead of a stock white sugar cube. Demerara cubes are richer in flavor than traditional white sugar cubes, and also a bit larger, so the sweetness expands through the drink a bit more.

Second, instead of a Champagne flute, serve the drink in a coupe. Today, coupes are ubiquitous as cocktail glasses; they are commonly used for Manhattans, daiquiris, and other drinks served up. 

But coupes were originally used as Champagne glasses, with big, wide bowls intended to emphasize the floral effervescence of the bubbly wine. You can see Leonardo DiCaprio toast with one in a famously GIF-able scene from The Great Gatsby.

Coupes don’t preserve carbonation nearly as well as the tall, slender flutes Champagne is served in today, but they make for a creamier, more quaffable drink, one that emphasizes aromas and flavors over physical essence.

Finally, garnish with a twist of orange peel rather than a lemon. The orange peel won’t give you quite as bright an aroma, but it will bring out the sweet-rich interplay between the demerara sugar, the bitters, and the Champagne. 

Here’s my slightly modified Champagne Cocktail:

• 3 dashes Angostura bitters

• 1 demerara sugar cube

• Champagne to top (about 4-5 ounces)

On a plate or in a flat-bottom ramekin, douse a demerara sugar cube with Angostura bitters. Place the bittered cube in a coupe. Top with Champagne. Garnish with an orange twist. 

A Sour With Champagne On Top: The French 75

If you’re not up for a Champagne Old Fashioned, then how about a sour with Champagne on top? I’m speaking, of course, of one of the most well-known Champagne cocktails: the French 75. 

A French 75 typically starts as a three-ingredient shaken cocktail combining syrup, fresh lemon juice and either gin or cognac. The Champagne is then poured on top.

Unlike in the Champagne Cocktail, the Champagne is not employed as the base spirit. Instead, its role is to extend the drink, giving it fizzy effervescence — much like the tonic in a gin and tonic, or the seltzer in a highball. The result is a bubbly, citrus-sweet drink with a heavier spirit base than a Champagne Cocktail, but a lighter, brighter overall profile than a typical sour. 

French 75 structures vary quite a bit, with different ratios that place varying levels of emphasis on the base spirit. Sometimes you’ll see as much as two ounces of gin or cognac at the base, with comparatively scant proportions of sugar and citrus juice to balance it out. I prefer recipes where the non-Champagne ingredients are balanced more like a traditional sour. I don’t want a drink that’s mostly cognac topped with Champagne.

Here’s a relatively common formula:

• ½ ounce simple syrup

• ½ ounce lemon juice

• 1 ounce gin or cognac

• Champagne to top (typically about 3-4 ounces)

Combine all ingredients except Champagne in a shaking tin. Add ice, then shake until chilled. Strain into a Champagne flute, then top with Champagne. Garnish with a lemon twist. 

In this form, it’s essentially a half-sized gin or cognac sour topped with bubbly. Even in its shrunken size, the formula above calls for a 2:1:1 ratio for the spirit/sugar/citrus juice. That’s a fairly common ratio for a sour, although many rely on close variants. The Thanksgiving Sour we made in November, for example, relied on an 8:3:3 ratio (2 ounces spirit, ¾ ounce sugar syrup, ¾ ounce citrus juice). These ratio variations may seem subtle, but they can make a big difference in how your drink ends up tasting. 

For this particular drink, however, what I really want to focus on is the ratio of the cocktail base (the combined spirit, sugar, and citrus juice) to the Champagne top. The classic formula is usually too Champagne-heavy for me. I want slightly more cocktail base and slightly less bubbly. 

That’s why I really like bartender Sarah Morrissey’s gin-based recipe, which expands the cocktail base a bit, adjusts the citrus portion upwards, adds a couple of dashes of orange bitters, and — most importantly — reduces the amount of Champagne to two ounces, down from three or four. There’s more shaken cocktail underneath, and less Champagne on top. To me, it’s a much tastier drink.

Morrisey’s recipe calls for cane syrup, a 1:1 syrup made with cane sugar, but you can use an ordinary simple syrup if that’s what you have, or even a rich (2:1) simple syrup — though you might want to dial back the sweetener just a tad, to something more like ⅔ ounce. Morrisey also recommends Plymouth gin. It’s great, but I’ve also had good results with Beefeater and Bombay Dry (not Sapphire), both of which are less expensive. 

In this case, stick with the flute, since the smaller portion of Champagne has already reduced the effervescence. 

• 2 dashes orange bitters

• ¾ ounce 1:1 cane syrup

• 1 ounce fresh-squeezed lemon juice

• 1 ½ ounce gin 

• Champagne to top (about 2 ounces)

Combine all ingredients except Champagne in a shaking tin. Add ice, then shake until chilled. Strain into a Champagne flute, then top with Champagne. Garnish with a lemon twist. 

This version of the drink appeals to me because it reads more like a traditional cocktail; the Champagne is a supporting player whose role is to add a little sparkle to what is essentially a tasty gin sour. It’s a cocktail dressed up with Champagne for New Year’s Eve — but it’s not too dressy. It’s going to a small party with friends, not a black-tie gala.  

The Champagne Daiquiri: Take Your Flat Champagne and Turn It Into Syrup

Like I said at the beginning: The problem with Champagne is that it’s meant to be consumed the day you open the bottle. Even if you make a pair of Champagne Cocktails and a pair of French 75s, you’ll probably still have some left over. What are you going to do with old, flat Champagne?

You could toss it and call it a loss. But I have a better idea: Turn it into a Champagne syrup, then make a classic daiquiri — a drink that normally consists of nothing more than rum, lime juice, and sugar, or some sort of sugar syrup. (We’ll spend a whole lot more time on daiquiris in future newsletters.) 

Making Champagne syrup is nearly as easy as making the ordinary syrups you’re already used to. Instead of water and sugar, it’s just a combination of flat Champagne and sugar. And even using relatively inexpensive bubbly, it’s delicious — grapey, layered with a sharp mix of fruit flavors that in some ways reveal themselves even more for having been sweetened. The flavor boosted syrup pairs incredibly well with a light, bright rum, making it a natural fit for a daiquiri. 

This idea comes courtesy Chicago bartender Marissa Barlow, whose Champagne Daiquiri provides a great way to extend the life of a bottle of dead Champagne. It’s like taking your sad, flat post-New Year’s Eve wine to Miracle Max. 

I’ve modified the recipe a little bit. The original calls for a 1:1 syrup, with equal parts sugar and Champagne. I preferred the drink with a rich Champagne syrup, involving a slightly sweeter, slightly thicker 2:1 sugar to Champagne ratio. The rich syrup makes the drink a little sweeter; it also gives the drink more body and heft. The original recipe also normally calls for ¾ ounce of lime juice; with the additional sugar from the rich syrup, I pushed the lime portion up to 1 ounce. I also added a pinch of salt to accentuate the citrus flavors.

Barlow recommends using very dry Champagne for the syrup. I picked up a bottle of Korbel Extra Dry California Champagne. It isn’t fancy, but it runs less than $15 a bottle, and it also works reasonably well in both the Champagne Cocktail and the French 75. 

The recipe calls for white rum, but doesn’t specify a brand: I strongly recommend Plantation 3 Stars, which can typically be found for less than $25. It’s quite versatile, and it will serve you well when we eventually delve deeper into rum-based drinks.  

Notice the ratio in this version comes out to 8:4:3 (spirit/citrus juice/sweetener), with a little more lime juice than sweetener, which gives the drink a distinctive brightness and acidity. 

• ¼ tsp (or a pinch) salt

• ¾ ounce rich Champagne syrup (see below)

• 1 ounce fresh lime juice

• 2 ounces white rum, such as Plantation 3 Stars

Combine all ingredients in a shaking tin. Add ice, then shake until chilled. Strain into a coupe. 

This is a champagne drink for cocktail geeks, a demonstration of the endless variability of core cocktail formulas and techniques, and a clever method of recycling an ingredient that might otherwise go to waste, making it ideally suited for home bartenders who don’t want to toss half-full bottles of Champagne — but may not want to consume a complete bottle in an evening. 

If you open a bottle of Champagne a day early and make the syrup before New Year’s Eve, it can be a delicious alternative to either straight champagne or more traditional champagne cocktails. And if you do pop open a fresh bottle of champagne to watch 2021 roll in, and don’t finish it, it will give you a small project to work on during New Year’s day, with the promise of a bright and delicious liquid payoff in the evening. 

Rich Champagne Syrup

Heat two parts sugar to one part flat dry Champagne (such as Korbel Extra Dry) in a saucepan on the stove. (I measured by weight, using 300 grams of sugar to 150 grams of flat Champagne; if you don’t have a kitchen scale and want to measure by volume, try 1 cup of sugar and a half cup of flat Champagne.) As the mixture warms, whisk to integrate. Heat on medium for about 10 minutes, right up to the point where it starts to bubble. Do not let it boil. Turn off the heat. Let mixture cool on the stovetop for 30 minutes to an hour. Transfer syrup to a fridge-safe container, then store in the refrigerator for up to a month. 

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Cocktail Library: But First, Champagne, A Modern Guide to the World’s Favorite Wine, by David White: My friend David White demystifies Champagne and its various production methods and regional permutations. A handy reference guide for novices and enthusiasts alike. 

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Finally, a  heartfelt thanks to this newsletters’ many readers and subscribers. May your drinks — and your life — be thoughtful and well balanced in 2021 and beyond. Happy New Year, everyone.