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December 22, 2013 at 7:39 am
· Filed under Christmas, Cocktails & Spirits
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If your Christmas cocktail of choice is a fizzy one, you don’t need to spring for costly Champagne. Consider more affordable bubblies:
Asti Spumante and Prosecco from Italy
Cava from Spain
Crémant from France
Espumante from Portugal
Sekt from Germany
Sparklers from Austria, New Zealand, South Africa, the U.S. and other countries
You can also serve red bubblies such as Italian Brachetto and Lambrusco or sparkling Shiraz.
All can be made with ginger ale cocktail for non-drinkers and kids.
For Christmas, the two sparkling cocktails below have a red or red and green color palate. Both are named for great Italian artists:
The great 19th century Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, author of “The Barber of Seville” and other memorable music
Tiziano Vecelli (Titian), the greatest Venetian painter of the sixteenth century and the father of modern painting
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What’s more Christmassy than a sparkling red cocktail? Photo of the Rossini Cocktail courtesy Chandon USA. |
RECIPE: ROSSINI COCKTAIL
Ingredients For 4 Cocktails
6 ounces strawberry purée
Chilled Prosecco or other sparkler
Champagne flutes
Garnish: whole strawberry or blackberry (not frozen)* or three green grapes on a toothpick
*Ideally the strawberry leaves will be green and perky. If the leaves are wilted, remove them and optionally combine the strawberry with a mint leaf on a cocktail pick or colored toothpick.
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The Tiziano Cocktail has a bonus treat:
frozen grapes. Photo courtesy Harvard
Common Press. |
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RECIPE: TIZIANO COCKTAIL
Ingredients For 4 Cocktails
6 ounces white grape juice (not grape juice cocktail)
Chilled Prosecco or other sparkler
Frozen green and/or red grapes
Champagne flutes
Preparation
1. Add three or four frozen grapes to each flute glass.
2. Pour 1½ ounces of grape juice into each flute.
3. Fill the glasses almost to the top with Prosecco. Serve.
RECIPE: KIR ROYALE
This deep red cocktail is one of our favorites at any time of the year.
Ingredients
Creme de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur
Sparkling wine
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Preparation
1. ADD cassis to taste to the bottom of the flute or tulip Champagne glass.
2. GENTLY POUR the sparkling wine down the side of the glass. Stirring breaks the bubbles, so the better option is not to stir (if you must, stir once, very gently).
7 VARIATIONS ON THE KIR ROYALE
Each is more delicious than the next. Check out the easy recipes.
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