Man Lab: New Year’s Champagne Cocktails

If there’s one day a year that everyone will be popping open the bubbly, it’s New Year’s Eve. While everyone will be happy drinking champagne (or sparkling wine as it’s properly known if it’s grown outside the Champagne region of France), there’s more that you can do with it than pour from the bottle into a champagne flute.

To shake things up on New Year’s Eve 2011, we’ve dug up some cocktail recipes that include champagne. They require more effort than just pouring from a bottle but I think they’re worth the effort.

French 75

1 1/2 oz Gin
2 tsp superfine Sugar
1 1/2 oz Lemon juice
4 oz Chilled Champagne
1 Orange slice
1 Maraschino cherry

In a shaker half-filled with ice cubes, combine the gin, sugar, and lemon juice. Shake well. Pour into a collins glass. Top with the Champagne. Stir well and garnish with the orange slice and the cherry.

Champagne Cosmopolitan

1 1/4 cups Cointreau or Grand Marnier
1 1/4 cups cranberry juice cocktail
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
3 tablespoons superfine granulated sugar
4 cups chilled Champagne or other sparkling wine

Stir together Cointreau, juices, and sugar and chill, covered, 2 to 6 hours. Just before serving, divide among 10 champagne flutes and top off with champagne.

Champagne Cocktail

Chilled Champagne
1 piece Sugar lump
2 dashes Bitters
1 twist of Lemon peel

Place lump of sugar and bitters in a chilled champagne flute. Fill with chilled champagne. Add the twist of lemon peel and serve.

Daiquiri Royale

4 fresh mint leaves
1 tsp sugar
½ lime, juice only
35ml/1¼fl oz white rum
1 tbsp orange liqueur
champagne, to top up
fresh mint sprig, to garnish

Place the mint, sugar and lime juice into a cocktail shaker and crush with the end of a rolling pin. Add the rum, orange liqueur and a handful of ice and shake hard. Strain the cocktail into a coupette glass, top with champagne and garnish with a fresh mint sprig.

Bellini