Classic Champagne Cocktail

You don’t need a high end champagne with this. In fact Cook’s makes a great champagne cocktail. My approach after decades of drinking this is to pour the champagne first, in a little glass saucer I drench the cube with bitters then drop it into the drink. Careful the bitters will will stain a non vitreous surface, also I found that pouring champagne onto the sugar cube gave the champagne a huge foamy head

I always had a nip of good brandy to my champagne cocktail.

I've found a few "tricks" to making a delicious Champagne Cocktail over the years. Use a coup, not a flute. The sugar cube acts as a surface that bubbles form on, and a coup will significantly reduce the "head." Champagne was sweeter in the 19th century, use a demi sec champagne, sweet prosecco or add about a half bar spoon of simple. The sweetness it really opens up the flavors of whatever bitters you're using.

A champagne cocktail is my sunset ritual in the summer. As a solo sipper, I can't get through a whole bottle before it starts to go flat. I buy half bottles of Gruet Brut (from NM, of all places) and can get two sunsets' worth of cocktail from it. I add a splash of Triple Sec.

No, no! Dropping a sugar cube into a drink is only a trick to catch the champagne bubbles and make it look cuter. The only thing it does in sweetening is to making the last few sips sickeningly sweet. Use simple sugar so that it blends with the bitters to give depth to the drink. Drinks are supposed to have a blended taste. And the lemon twist takes away from the champagne taste. The Times seems to think you should add lemon to to everything"to brighten it." What is brighter than champagne??

Try the Canadian Champagne Cocktail! Chill the glass and rim with maple sugar. Into the glass, pour 1/2 oz icewine (Inniskilin makes a tiny bottle that is perfect for this) and add a few dashes of bitters. Top with Trius Brut or similar Canadian dry sparkling. Garnish with a twist of lemon. Cheers, Eh?

Must be made with a quarter of an orange slice gently squeezed over the sugar and bitters like the bartenders at 21Club would do. The finer the champagne the tastier the cocktail. Cheers!

The sweetness makes a very nice change to Champagne... I am very keen on "French 75" at the moment, which adds, brandy/cognac, sugar syrup to lemon in the fizz. By the way, any dry fizzy wine works as well in this, as the additions disguise the quality of the grape.