A Little New Year’s Sparkle-ing

I was fully committed to keeping the laptop closed through the new year, until my friend and former colleague, Arun Das, called to talk sparkling wines. Needless to say, my eyes lit up, and I couldn’t resist.

Arun has a terrific website called Spirits in the Material World. (If you don’t get The Police reference, congratulations on your youth, but check out that link. It’s a classic.) Arun talks about alcohol much like I talk about wine, and he had the great idea to chat about the lovely Bubbly Cocktail Cards A-Z from Adams Media (pictured above) and offer our readers some fun bubbly cocktail ideas.

Below, is a brilliant blog post from Arun with all sorts of fun facts about cocktails, plus three recipes that Arun, and his awesome wife, Erin, tried out.

Here is the one we’ll be enjoying at my New Year’s Eve Party, the Francey Not Fanciest one in the deck:

Black Velvet

3oz. cold Champagne or sparkling wine

3oz. cold stout (like Guinness)

Pour Champagne into flute (I approve in this case).
Pour beer on top (slowly).
Do not stir, for a layered delight.

Wishing you all a wonderful 2025.

Arun….take it away!

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Bubbly Cocktail Recipe Cards Will Tickle Your (Francey Not) Fancy for the Holidays

By Arun Kristian Das 

I’ve been reading and writing about spirits and beer for a number of years. Sometimes if I’m lucky, I get to review a book and/or interview the author. In the last year or so, Adams Media, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, has published several collections of cocktail recipes and sent them to me for review. 

But these collections aren’t actually books—they’re decks of recipe cards. I enjoyed the deck of tequila cocktail recipes as well as the deck of summer cocktail recipes. 

When I had the opportunity to check out the recently published Bubbly Cocktail Cards A–Z: The Ultimate Champagne & Prosecco Drink Recipe Dictionary Deck, I thought it could be a great fit for Francey Not Fancy’s audience and that I could get Alison’s take on making cocktails with sparkling wine. Alison didn’t disappoint. (More on that in a minute.)

And this is the time of year for bubbly, isn’t it? Americans typically ramp up their buying of sparkling wine around the holidays, although research showing the holiday bump isn’t as dramatic as it once was suggests that we’re enjoying bubbly year-round. Great, I say, because it’s delicious… as an aperitif, a celebratory drink, and, yes, as a cocktail. 

So here is an overview of Bubbly Cocktail Cards A–Z, which came out in October and costs about $17. As with other decks from the publisher, Bubbly is a collection of 75 beautifully designed full-color matte cards. Each card features a recipe on one side and a photo on the other. The name of the cocktail appears on both sides. The cards are organized in the flip-top deck from A to Z, divided into five tabs: A–E, F–J, K–O, P–T, and U–Z.

The deck also includes a “Bartender’s Guide” booklet that has a very, very brief introduction to sparkling wine (terminology, methodology, flavor profiles) plus primers on mixology, bar tools, glassware, garnishes, et al. It’s a handy little guide but doesn’t break new ground. 

You’ll want to quickly jump to reading and admiring the recipe cards themselves, even if you never intend on mixing them all. (Isn’t that the hallmark of most beautiful recipe collections, though? They’re enjoyable to read but you always seem to come back to a handful of tried-and-true recipes—that’s why those seven pages in your fave cookbook are wrinkled, water-stained, and dog-eared and the rest of the book is pristine, amirite?)

Before I discuss a few cocktail recipes from the deck that I tried and want to share with you, let’s circle back to Alison and her view on making cocktails with Champagne, prosecco, and other sparklers. 

If you haven’t read her story about how her heart broke over a Las Vegas hotel serving Veuve Clicquot mimosas by the pool, go read it now and then come back. 

Are you back? OK, read on.

“For those of you who aren't familiar, Veuve Clicquot is at least $75 a bottle and when you're paying for bottle service in Vegas, if you get it for under $150, it's a miracle. And they are dumping orange juice in it, and I was thinking, ‘This is disgusting,’” Alison told me. “These champagnes have a flavor profile that you are dumping sweet orange juice in, and I'm like, ‘Oh God,’ it feels to me like they're totally at war with each other. You're wasting great champagne. For people who don't think Veuve Clicquot is good because it's popular, it's a really good champagne. If you need a gift to bring somewhere, it's always a good idea.”

Alison and I agree that you shouldn’t use crappy ingredients if you’re looking to make a delicious cocktail. Use good spirits. Pick a decent mixer. Buy quality bitters. Heck, even the ice can matter. But I’d also never advocate using an 18-year-old whiskey in an old fashioned or a whiskey sour. That’s just bonkers.

So when it comes to making the recipes in the Bubbly deck, buy something that’s a good value—and also fits well with the other ingredients. 

“You don't want to buy the absolute cheap shit because there's very little attention given to it. They tend to be sugar bombs and that's going to give you a headache,” Alison says. “But I wouldn't stress too much because if you look at any of these beautiful recipe cards, they require, in many cases, a splash of Champagne or a couple of ounces of bubbly. And so don't lose your mind over it. It's okay to have something that's not great. You just really want the bubble or the fizz.”

That’s good to keep in mind. In these cocktails, the sparkling wine is kind of a substitute for club soda or seltzer. It’s there to provide some fizz. The touch of fruitiness is a bonus. The added alcohol is mostly negligible. And the flavor profile of the wine likely gets overwhelmed by the spirits and/or other mixers. 

Alison’s advice for what bubbly to use? Most of the time, a value prosecco (Italian sparkler), cava (Spanish), or crémant (French but not from the Champagne region) will serve you well; something in the $10–$20 range. 

If the cocktail is traditionally French—such as Kir Royale or French 75 (both are featured in the Bubbly deck), Alison says go for a crémant for the value, but you can uncork a bottle of Champagne if you really want to. (Just don’t blame us if you feel like you wasted your money after your boozy brunch.)

If Costco sells wine and liquor in your state (not all do), you cannot go wrong with the Kirkland Signature Asolo Prosecco. (Kirkland Signature is Costco’s store brand.) Alison and I both love this prosecco on its own (and she doesn’t often drink prosecco that way). And at under $8 a bottle it is perfect for most cocktails in the Bubbly deck. 

If you want an upgrade, buy a bottle or two of Kirkland Signature Champagne Brut for $20, a phenomenal value for a true Champagne. It is yummy enough to drink on its own but will also do well in cocktails (if you really want to spend the extra cash). 

If you don’t have access to Costco/Kirkland booze, go to a reputable wine shop where the staff knows what they’re doing. Ask them to suggest a bottle of sparkling wine for cocktail-making. They should steer you well. 

Anyway, back to the cocktail recipes. I chose these three to try.

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Inara Serra

Serves 1

Unexpected. Uncommon. Undeniable. This full-bodied sparkler leads with turmeric and orange blossom, and ends with mellow sweetness-sort of like the Firefly character it's named after.

1 ounce rye whiskey

½ ounce simple syrup

½ teaspoon orange blossom water

1 dash ground turmeric

2½ ounces dry cava

1. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add whiskey, simple syrup, orange blossom water, and turmeric.

2. Shake and strain into a cocktail glass or champagne coupe filled with ice. Top with cava.

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MY TAKE

When I saw that the deck included a cocktail recipe named for a character on the canceled-too-soon sci-fi show Firefly and played by the actress Morena Baccarin, one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met (at a holiday party a loooong time ago), I knew I had to make it for this review.

Alas… the Inara Serra cocktail wasn’t as charming as Inara IRL. Something just tasted off to me. Then Erin, my wife, verbalized it: “It tastes dusty.” Yes, that was it. The powdered turmeric seemed out of place here. Even vigorous shaking didn’t dissolve it enough. So if you try this, maybe skip the turmeric.

I made this cocktail a couple of times. Once, I used Old Forester Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey, which, at 100 proof, works really well in cocktails (try it in a Manhattan). You can get a bottle for about $30 on Wine.com. (I think I paid a little more than that at a local shop.) I then made another glass using Still Austin “The Artist” Straight Rye Whiskey, an interesting 99.6 proof rye from Texas.

For the bubbly, I didn’t have cava on hand so I used Veuve du Vernay Brut, a really affordable sparkling wine from France. I paid $14 at a delightful independent store in my neck of the woods called Bottle Shop of Spring Lake, which sells wine, beer, spirits, and gourmet snacks. That is stupid-cheap for a French sparkler. Bottle Shop recommended it for mimosas and bellinis, so I figured it would do well in the recipes from Bubbly.

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Negroni Sbagliato

Serves 1

Sbagliato means "broken" or "wrong" in Italian, and refers to how this version of the Negroni uses sparkling wine instead of the typical gin.

1½ ounces Campari

1½ ounces sweet vermouth

1½ ounces prosecco

1 orange zest

1. Fill a mixing glass with ice. Add Campari and vermouth.

2. Stir mixture with a bar spoon until very cold, then strain into a small wine glass or champagne flute. Top with prosecco. Garnish with orange zest.

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MY TAKE

I do enjoy the occasional Negroni aperitif. I like gin but many folks, including Alison and my wife, do not. This version subs the gin for prosecco. Although the recipe card says sbagliato is Italian for “broken” or “wrong,” the word also can be translated as “mistaken.” 

Legend has it that the Negroni Sbagliato was born of a mistake at Bar Basso in Milan. (I say “legend” because the stories of how certain cocktails come to be are just… a little too “triple-C” in my book: conveniently cute and clever.)

Making a Negroni this way is absolutely not a mistake, though, because the sparkling wine gives this a mild but pleasant fizz. I used the Veuve du Vernay Brut again (because the bottle was open) but I bet the relative sweetness of prosecco balances the bitterness better. 

A Negroni Sbagliato is also lighter on the alcohol content than a traditional Negroni, which is a beast of booziness. 

Have unopened bottles of prosecco, cava, or Champagne on the morning of New Year’s Day? Here’s an idea: Serve up some negroni sbagliati as the aperitivi before brunch. You’ll say grazie mille to me later.

An important note about vermouth

Vermouth is a fortified wine so it is perishable. Keep it in the refrigerator, not in/on your bar. Buy a small bottle because that big bottle likely will go bad before you can finish it (unless you’re drinking vermouth the way folks in Spain do, which is on the rocks as an aperitif every evening).

Alison’s rule of thumb with vermouth? 

“In the first month, it's going to taste great either on its own or in a minimal cocktail like a martini where you're [mixing] vodka and vermouth—you're keeping it clean,” she says. “Second month, it's going to really start to lose its flavor and degrade—so mix it into something where a lot of other stuff is going on. And the third month—cook with it or toss it.”

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Americana

Serves 1

What's more American than Tennessee whiskey? Mixing it with bitters and sparkling wine is an unexpected pairing that's refreshing and has some bite.

1 ounce Tennessee whiskey (such as Jack Daniels)

1 teaspoon superfine sugar

1 dash Angostura bitters

3 ounces sparkling wine

1 lemon wheel

1. Pour whiskey into a cocktail glass or champagne coupe. Add sugar and bitters and stir.

2. Top with sparkling wine and garnish with lemon wheel.

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MY TAKE

I’m a whiskey drinker, so when I’m in the mood for a cocktail I naturally gravitate to ones where the whiskey can shine. 

The Americana is a bit like a fizzy old fashioned. I enjoyed it a lot, actually, but I almost think the teaspoon of sugar is unnecessary because of the wine. Erin liked it but says she’d just rather drink an old fashioned (she really does like the classics). 

I used Veuve du Vernay Brut (that one $14 bottle sure went a long way!) and an affordable four-year-old Tennessee whiskey called King's Creek Black Label, which is exclusive to Total Wine (to wit, it’s a store brand). If you don’t have Tennessee whiskey, just use bourbon.

The recipe calls for Agostoura bitters but Alison suggests using bitters made by Hella Cocktail Company, which was cofounded in New York by a friend of hers. 

“They started as Hella Bitters because they would go into bars and [thought], ‘Why doesn't anybody else make bitters? We're going to make them as special batches from scratch,’” Alison says. “It's really fine-quality bitters and they make lots of different flavors. I would encourage people to check out Hella because we're huge fans.”

Oh, about the lemon wheel—I cut mine from a Meyer lemon, which is much sweeter than a standard lemon (it’s a lemon-tangerine hybrid). And the peel is edible, too, so using it in a cocktail gives you a sweet-tart treat when you’ve finished the drink itself.

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Although I picked these three recipes to showcase here, Bubbly has so many more worth trying. Alison loves the aforementioned Kir Royale and French 75, so give those a try. Most of the recipes serve one but a few are portioned for a party. 

Whatever you choose, we wish you a happy, bubbly, and delicious New Year.

Enjoy. 

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Arun Kristian Das is a freelance writer, web designer, video maker, and tour guide. In his 30-year career, he has survived TV news, print and digital journalism, and book publishing. He writes about whiskey, beer, and more at Spirits in the Material World. Arun grew up in New York City and Rome, Italy, but now lives in New Jersey. 

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Recipes excerpted from Bubbly Cocktail Cards A–Z: The Ultimate Champagne & Prosecco Drink Recipe Dictionary Deck by Adams Media. Copyright © 2024 by Simon & Schuster, LLC. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.