Coming again this month, is the next Cocktail of the Month from the Substack, the Champagne Cocktail:
With Halloween over, and the holiday season starting out, let’s go with something simple, flexible, and fun for the cocktail of the month for November, the Champagne Cocktail.
The Origin
This is an old drink, dating back to the 1800s, documented in the Bar-Tender’s Guide by Jerry Thomas:
Now, looking at that recipe, one may think of the recipe for an Old Fashioned, which also uses sugar, bitters, and (optional) citrus zest. Considering that there are recipes for champagne cocktails that include an ounce of spirit (I’ll get to that later, promise), I can also see someone deciding to turn their Old Fashioned into a long drink by topping it with champagne.
There are also arguments that the Champagne Cocktail evolved from older punches, being scaled down to something that can be whipped up quickly and as a single serving drink.
The Recipe
- 1 sugar cube/1 teaspoon sugar
- 2-3 dashes bitters
- Champagne (or sparkling wine of choice)
To build the drink, chill either a flute or coupe, drop in a sugar cube, douse it in bitters (or use a bittered sugar cube), and top with champagne. Give a brief stir if you’d like. There is no garnish needed, but to honor the history, feel free to go with a twist of lemon zest.
Now, sugar cubes aren’t that popular (outside of bartenders, tea houses, and LSD enthusiasts) and it’s entirely possible to make this with regular sugar or simple syrup. This has the pro of making sure the sugar will be fully dissolved, with the con of missing one visual aesthetic of the classic drink. The bold line of bubbles coming up from the sugar cube (and all of its nucleation points).
Variations
As I mentioned above (told you I’d get to it), there are quite a few variations on this drink. Most of them are adding an ounce of spirit to the drink. You can add the ounce of spirit in before topping with champagne. If you’re switching to simple and adding spirit, I’d recommend adding everything but the champagne to a shaker and shaking it to chill and combine before straining into the flute.
For the spirits to add, the most frequent ones called for are bourbon or brandy (with apple brandy making frequent appearances). Simple change to the recipe that gives a different drink:
- 1 sugar cube/1-2 teaspoon simple syrup
- 2-3 dashes bitters
- 1 part (1 oz) bourbon/brandy
- Champagne (or sparkling wine of choice)
For those who are familiar with the Wisconsin/Brandy Old Fashioned, which is generally topped with a sparkling mixer (soda water, tonic, ginger, etc.), this seems a fair call for a variation on that as well.
Batch Prepping
To batch this is easy. Build a station to let your guests make their own. You can either provide a selection of bittered sugar cubes, or simply a pile of sugar cubes and a selection of bitters to use. Provide chilled sparkling wine, and have fun with it.
Mocktail Version
For those out there looking for a non-alcoholic version of this drink, you would need to make due with a NA champagne, or you could substitute in flavored seltzers. Even in that case, you would still have bitters in there, so if you’re avoiding alcohol entirely, that will be a problem (unless you’re going with NA bitters as well).
So there we go, a simple drink for your November and holidays. It’s a low ABV sipper, easy to throw together, and festive enough for gatherings. Is this a drink you’ve had before?
My wife has been on a sparkling wine kick lately, she likes one called Andre.
She is too jumpy to open it, so that’s my job.
I might try to get her to try this one.
Tonight, I’m making apple cider syrup for apple old fashioneds.
Andre Cold Duck?
It’s this one:
https://www.totalwine.com/wine/champagne-sparkling-wine/sparkling-wine/brut/andre-brut/p/982750
I figured it was cheap, but I didn’t realize it was that cheap.
But she married me, so obviously her standards are pretty low.
The Giant?… scratch that, he was French. Sparkling Wine is a nonstarter.
In a 1984 Late Night with David Letterman appearance, André confirmed drinking 117 beers in one sitting.
pistoffnick:
119 beers. While riding a shark!
By the time Andre was done filming The Princess Bride, his hotel bar tab was nearly $40,000.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/andre-the-giant-drinking-stories
That brings back childhood memories. There was always Andre CD in the garage fridge. I got to pop the plastic cork.
I’m getting my dog back! So I’m told. No dangerous dog bullshit either. Again, as I’m told. Which is a mini-miracle to me. I annoyed the fuck out of them before I got the guy high enough to actually tell me.
The responding animal control officer said he didn’t believe in demons until he saw my little guy doing his thing. Fun fact – his name in the pound was Ares. I guess he has definitely earned that name though I’ll probably stick with the one I gave him.
I look crazy taking him back to everyone and it’s tough to kind of explain to people who aren’t present why the dog gets like that with one person. And there’s no way in hell I could let that dog be killed when I know full damn well that the dog only started acting like that because he saw someone trying to attack me. That’s a bunch of bullshit. Dog isn’t a monster. He’s not some pit who just randomly snapped and that’s how it was being painted.
That’s good news.
Ares is a cool name for a dog.
I named my Husky Maximus because I had just watched Gladiator for the 100th time before we got him.
I thought that was an impressive moniker, but we all just call him Max, which is not nearly as cool.
My wife still hasent seen Gladiator.
I told her it’s one of two movies that will make grown men cry.
We named our Aussie Gus, short for Augustus McRae from Lonesome Dove.
He also goes by Gusso, the Gusser, and when Mrs. Dean is mad at him, Gustopher. No, I don’t understand it either.
Great news!
The gubborment in my whole county thinks I’m a crazy fuck apparently.
Hopefully this is just a funny story I tell one day about what a chad Butters is and how he lived to tell the tale so I could bail him out.
Nah, I don’t think he’s a monster. It will be.
I still think keeping him for 10 days is retarded. Like if the dog has an issue how does keeping him away from his person for 10 days help any? But I guess they were deliberating on the dangerous dog shit and probably waiting to see if the decision would be changed to off the little guy.
He was the talk of law enforcement and local animal control in the city and wider county area. Kind of a celebrity pit now!
It sounds like the two of you are a team and he’s otherwise selective about who he trusts.
He’s still young right? His personality towards others will likely change. Lily became… bitchy at about three years old to other people and dogs (other than those who were already her friends) but has mellowed out a lot since she turned five.
Bro, can you visit him while he’s jail?
He’s 1.5 years. Literally his favorite thing to do is to go out and see people. He’s not a fan of all of them, but that’s his jam.
He views this person as a threat and when they start with someone like that (in this case after months and months of build-up) they are going to pick-up right where they left off each time. So to the authorities it looks like this dog just snapped and went apeshit for no reason.
Good.
So how did you like the Gruet? Albuquerque’s finest champagne!
It’s fine, to me wine really breaks down to offensive and non-offensive. I can go deep on whisk(e)y, beer, and gin, but I’m relatively pedestrian when it comes to wine.
finally something I can out geek Neph on
You can do a side-by-side with it and the mid-market Frenches (Moet White Star, Veuve Clicquot, Louis Roderer, Piper Heidsiek…) and you’ll be impressed.
I just passed my DOT physical, a total bullshit way the feds fuck with you and funnel money to docs so I’ll be drinking eggnog tonight.
And this time CPRM it will have rum in it.
Granted I have to find eggnog first.
May I suggest a Tom and Jerry instead?
I thought your link would lead to this.
I like the tom and Jerry too.
After the uptick in the stock market yesterday, the Dow is currently down over 1600 points/3 percent. For those more well versed, make of that what you will. I’m not even trying to parse that out.
Eh. It’ll go back up again.
Maybe.
The powder shop is done with my frame.
I pick it up after work.
I’ll post a photo in the evening thread . . . after 30 minutes of course
Nay nay, good sir. It is Thursday night! Post on the first minute! No rules on Thursdays!
well . . . ok
Everything is voluntary, so don’t do it if you are uncomfortable. Bro will first it.
Holly fuck sandisk is getting murdered on the stock market. I mean not really still super high bit 20% down today and 60% from all time high
Micron western digital seagatw all 15% down… Is the AI memory bubble bursting?
Everyone is rotating out of AI. So the direct AI players and the indirect players. So storage, memory, GPUs, etc.
1999 romantic comedy Blast from the Past, starring Brendan Fraser (Adam) and Alicia Silverstone (Eve):
• Eve: “Here ya go, one champagne cocktail.”
• Adam: “Oh, thank you.”
• Eve: “I thought only hookers drank those things?”
• Adam: “Well, I know Mom sure likes ’em.”
An article for Neph
How Beer Companies Stole Happy Hour From Liquor Brands
https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/how-beer-companies-stole-happy-hour-from-liquor-brands-342e96c7?st=zT3GRX&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Also – I hope everybody didn’t decide to make a bunch of stock purchases yesterday. It’s been a wild ride today.
I look at my 401k about one a year.
Well, don’t make today that day.
The RTD ride has been interesting, Ohio recently got Tip Top Cocktails which are 21%+ ABV (requiring them to be sold in state licensed liquor stores only), come in 100 ml cans (super tiny), and are $18 a four pack. So about double the price of the OTR ones, but those are 20% or lower ABV (that I’ve seen here) which puts them in grocery store sales range (where they routinely go on sale for $10/375 ml).
As much as today hurts on my individual stocks I’m still up 44% YTD.
Was 70% last week.
Oh well.
6% on the month hit on my Ira. At least there isn’t much in it.
Is that you, Nancy?
I put a bit of money in my index funds every week.
I dontt know anything about index funds.
You find them at the opposite end of the brokerage from the Table of Contents funds
Affirmative
Like Sanders, Katz sees a progressive future laser-focused on economics as the clear way forward — and nowhere is that more clear than in Texas.
“Hundreds of millions were spent against James and Gina trying to tag them on a trans issue,” he said. “It failed in epic fashion because there was no room for misunderstanding or ambiguity over what they stood for, because they had grounded themselves in such affirmative and positive economic messaging.”
EAT THE RICH is the sine qua non of affirmative messaging.
Yes, every student of history and capable of observation knows Democrats in charge of a state means strong economy and affordability.
Just look at California… wait, New York… wait, Illinois… wait…
“The more moderate wing of the party has changed the definition of what a moderate is. I think that’s great,” he said. “We should be a big tent party, but you are seeing a big tent that is unified in opposition to the oligarchy, that is unified in opposition to corruption, and that is united in a pursuit of fundamental and structural change. And that’s going to be really encouraging if that can carry over to 2028.”
For Sanders, it’s vindication of an argument he’s made for years and that Democrats have ignored — despite what he says is its simplicity.
“Focusing on the needs of the vast majority of American people who are struggling in the richest country on earth, while the very rich are getting richer, man, you don’t need a Ph.D. in economics or political science to figure that out,” he said. “That is the issue. How do we create a decent standard of living for all of our people? How do we end the corrupt campaign finance system? That is exactly what Democrats have got to do.”
If you define “corruption” as any private for-profit enterprise it really makes sense.
https://x.com/gunrights/status/2118388721921724521
AffordabilityEnding Iran warGun control!
May I live long enough to witness the shooting starting.
Hmmm, databases require personal data and I have it on solid recent court decisions that the Federales can’t have personal data.
Funny that, isn’t there recent precedent stating that you can’t just have a registry at the federal level? Something something, no tax to register, something…