With New Year’s Eve just around the corner we’ve got bubbles on the brain. Bubbles and books, of course. So to combine the two we’ve created a few sparkling wine cocktails with literary twists.
It’s not necessarily been a year to celebrate. It has been trying and complicated and we don’t really mind seeing it go. So these cocktails are all about new beginnings, death and endings.
French 3 (Musketeers)
1 oz gin
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz strawberry vanilla bean syrup
Sparkling wine
Garnish: Hersey kiss
Combine lemon juice, strawberry vanilla syrup and gin in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake until well-chilled. Strain into a flute. Top with sparkling wine then garnish the glass with a Hersey kiss.
Strawberry Vanilla Bean Syrup
Equal measure of sugar, strawberry, water and one vanilla bean pod scraped out. (We used a half cup of each but may have had a heavy hand with the strawberries) Follow these instructions but add a vanilla bean to the mix.
This is a French 75 with an Alexander Dumas twist. Sort of. The original three musketeer candy bar was made with strawberry, chocolate and vanilla. So we took inspiration from that. We tried to think of a more iconic flavor combination and could not. This novel has history coursing through it, with the characters looking to the future. It seems like the perfect idea for a new year cocktail to remember and grow from the past while looking to the future. Not to mention, everyone wants a little *kiss* at midnight.
Sparkling Cyanide
4-5 dashes grapefruit rosemary bitters
Sugar cubes
Sparkling wine
Sprigs of rosemary
Dash the rosemary bitters on the sugar cube. Place in the bottom of a flute and pour sparkling over. Garnish with rosemary sprig.
Champagne is traditionally tied to celebration. So leave it to Agatha Christie to turn it on its head and make it about death. Literally. It is part murder “weapon” in her book “Sparkling Cyanide.” In lieu of cyanide, we added a little sugar and some bitters. In our own little perverse twist, however, we chose rosemary to honor Agatha’s murder victim: Rosemary. Plus it adds just a hint of herbal notes that sing of fresh beginnings. So let’s all raise a glass to death–the death of 2020.
Isn’t It Pretty
1 oz St-Germain
1/2 oz absinthe
Sparkling wine
Dry shake St-Germain and absinthe in a cocktail shaker. Pour it into a flute then top with sparkling wine.
This is a riff on a Champagne Hemingway also called Death in the Afternoon. Instead of drawing inspiration from the book of the same name, we chose another Hemingway classic–”The Sun Also Rises.” The last line of the book is “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” It is the idea of letting go of what could have been, to move forward with what is now, and for the year ahead. Just don’t follow Hemingway’s instructions to “drink three to five of these slowly.” Things might not be so pretty if you do.
We hope that you have a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday!