Sharkbait’s Cocktail of the Week: Bubbles and Brown

Good morning and Happy Friday. This week I’m sticking with the champagne theme as somehow I’ve allowed a bottle to go open and unused in my fridge. After testing it’s fizziness factor and it having passed, I decided to finish up the bottle and go with a champagne drink again. I grabbed my Paris Cocktail book and went looking for champagne drinks. What better book to consult than a French cocktail book right?

The Bastille Celebration caught my eye and decided to make it for this week! Though Had I been thinking, I should have made it last month for the actual holiday but whatever.

Bastille Celebration

2 oz. Bastille Whisky (I used Amorik Classic)

A splash of St. Germain (or other elderflower liqueur)

Champagne

In a chilled champagne glass, combine the whisky and liqueur, and then fill with champagne. Garnish with a strawberry or raspberry

I really like the look of this drink already. The  bright red strawberry is a great contrast from the dark gold champagne and whiskey base.

Unsurprisingly, I get no aroma here. Champagne doesn’t bring much to the party, but what it does do is completely cover any kind of whiskey aromas that might have attempted to come through.

The whiskey/champagne combination is rather interesting. It has an overwhelming dryness to it from the champagne topper. The whiskey gets mostly lost sadly. Though I’m using an older whiskey that I wrote about for one of my first posts here oddly enough. So while not the specific whiskey called, for it’s a single malt whiskey from France, so it is the closest I was gonna get when making this. I’m wondering if the “splash” (about half a barspoon) of elderflower wasn’t enough to take the dryness off and allow the whiskey to shine through. I’d try this again, but I need to re-supply my Amorik stock before I go making more cocktails with it. Thankfully, it appears to be available domestically, so I just need to track down a bottle. I can pick up some of the flavors from the whiskey in the slight aftertaste this leaves, but none of that signature whiskey mouth feel and warmth you’d associate with a whiskey based drink.

So the book mentions that this is a drink for someone that “doesn’t know they like whiskey…yet” I’m inclined to agree on that perspective. I’m a seasoned whiskey drinker and I’m reviewing this drink from that position. However, if someone doesn’t like whiskey, I think they would very much enjoy this more than I am. Again, not to say that this is a bad drink that I’m not going to finish. It isn’t, and I am; but I’m not sure I would use a (for me) rare bottle of French whiskey on a champagne cocktail. Though I do give this creativity points for utilizing champagne in a way that I never really would have thought. Until last week, I would have used champagne in French 75s, Champagne cocktails, and mimosas (other than drinking straight obviously) but this is a new way to incorporate this underutilized ingredient.

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)