Die hard champagne enthusiasts may consider
us sacrilegious to add other ingredients to
such a beautiful wine, but here at in-the-spirit,
we just love to experiment and including champagne
in a recipe can make a great cocktail really
spectacular.
Champagne is a sparkling wine of great distinction – turning
any occasion into something a little more special.
There are various styles of champagne: for example
Brut (very dry) and Demi Sec (sweeter) as well
as vintage (made from grapes of one specific
year) and non vintage (grapes from blends produced
in various years). To earn the right to have
the word champagne on the bottle label however,
the liquid inside must be entirely produced from
Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Noir grapes
grown in the Champagne region of Northern France
around the cities of Reims and Epernay. The champagne
producers guard their exclusive name vigorously
and have in the past been to court to protect
it as in 1993 when they went into battle to prevent
the Yves Saint Laurent company producing a perfume
called “Champagne” and won their
case. It is one of the few “white wines” in
the world produced from red grapes – due
to the way they are gently pressed so as not
to bruise the skins. There are also extraordinarily
strict limits on the amount of juice that can
be squeezed from a certain weight of grapes
to maintain the highest quality of champagne
produced.
Here we have selected a few of our favourite
champagne cocktails for you to try out – we
hope you enjoy making them. For the best cocktail
results, always use chilled champagne. Serve
all champagne cocktails in a flute
glass which
allows the bubbles to move from the bottom to
the top of the glass. The more space the bubbles
have to move around in within the glass, the
longer it will keep its fizz!
|