There are few things about which I can be considered conservative. From music to art to style to food and drink, I embrace with equal enthusiasm tradition and innovation, the classics and the iconoclasts.
Then there’s Champagne.
As an avowed fan of French bubbles, I have some pretty strict views on the stuff, beginning with how it should be served—spare me the fruit fly swimming pools known as Champagne saucers, please—and ending with the steadfast conviction that only sparkling wine made via the méthode champenoise within the borders of the Champagne district of France should be called Champagne. And never, ever should Champagne be mixed, muddled, blended, added to or otherwise adulterated.
So how was it, then, that recently I found myself in my kitchen surrounded by Champagne bottles, flutes, various varieties of bitters and a large box of sugar cubes? If pressed, I guess I would say my motivation was simple curiosity.
It was the siren call of the Champagne Cocktail that brought me to this place. With the warmth of summer fast approaching, the setting appears ideal for a sipping drink that’s cold, a little bit playful and certainly indulgent. But how to make it?
Research provided almost innumerable variations, but the specifics of the classic remain pretty constant: sugar, bitters and Champagne. Still questions persisted.
For instance, what wine to use? When legendary 19th-century mixologist Jerry Thomas wrote about the Champagne Cocktail, sparkling wine likely had a single principle definition, that being proper French Champagne, while today’s options encompass wines from all over the globe. To cocktail maven Dale DeGroff, however, there remains only one option.
“In my opinion, [for a Champagne Cocktail,] it must be French to be authentic,” he says.
Research proved DeGroff’s unrepentant traditionalism to be very correct. In my tests using French, Californian and Italian sparkling wines, the superior drink was time and again constructed with real Champagne, in both presentation—the less-expensive wines tended to foam aggressively when poured on top of the sugar cube—and flavor.
CLASSIC CHAMPAGNE COCKTAIL 1sugar cube 3–4 drops aromatic bitters 4–5 ounces French Champagne Place sugar cube in a Champagne flute and top with a few drops of bitters. Fill flute carefully with well-chilled Champagne, agitate the cube briefly with a swizzle stick and serve.
Agitation is another issue. Thomas’ recorded recipe actually calls for shaking the drink, an instruction later interpreted by David Wondrich in his book, “Imbibe,” as meaning to pour with ice back and forth between glasses. While I wouldn’t advise either method, some breaking up of the sugar cube definitely helps the flavor development, and to this end, I found that a few turns of a swizzle stick not only worked wonders, but also produced an appealingly frothy cocktail.
As for which and how much bitters to use, I found that aromatic bitters worked the best in quantities of just a few drops to coat one side of the sugar cube. Saturation of the cube, as called for in some recipes I’ve seen, produced a too-bitter cocktail.
Still, one variation does seem worthy of mention. I discovered that a healthy dose of peach bitters bestows on the Champagne Cocktail a fruity appeal reminiscent of a Bellini, without the Italian drink’s imposing sweetness. Far from classic, perhaps, but most certainly a pleasant diversion on a hot summer’s day.