It’s been a year since we started this blog and we’re still with it! Yay us. Hopefully a number of you are still with us as well. 🙂 In honor of the auspicious occasion, we decided to make a couple of sparkling wine cocktails since we’re in a celebratory mood.

Blogging has been great fun for us, as it gives us a regular excuse to experiment with new cocktails and ingredients, or with existing cocktails to try and figure out why they work for us. Plus it helpfully requires us to write everything down so we don’t forget. 🙂

This week, we wanted to create sparkling wine cocktails using the RinQuinQuin (a recent addition that we haven’t put through its paces yet) and apple brandy, since it is tasty and autumnal, and we haven’t often seen it in combination with sparkling wine.

Time Flies

• 2 oz gin (We used the Sound Spirits Ebb+Flow)
• 1 1/2 oz peach aperitif wine (We used RinQuinQuin. Substitute peach liqueur and a dash or two of peach or lemon bitters if that isn’t available.)
• 1/2 oz simple syrup (skip if using peach liqueur)
• 3 champagne or sparkling wine
• Lemon bitters (We used the Bitter Truth Lemon Bitters)
• 1 sugar cube

Put several drops of lemon bitters on the sugar cube. Place sugar cube in bottom of a champagne flute. Stir first 3 ingredients with ice. Strain into the flute. Top with champagne or sparkling wine.

• Nose: Lemon, peach and little bit of juniper.
• Palate: Sweet cooked peach and slightly astringent wine at the front. Strong juniper and a little anise on the mid-palate along with a bitter bite. Medium-dry finish with bitter lemon notes.

Fox Bushel

• 2 oz apple brandy (We used the Laird’s 12 yr)
• 1/2 oz oloroso sherry
• 1/2 oz simple syrup
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• 2 oz champagne or sparkling wine

Stir first 4 ingredients with ice. Strain into a champagne coupe. Top with champagne.

• Nose: Apple, lots of apple, clove, black pepper, oxidized barrel notes. Little hint of cinnamon.
• Palate: Sweet apple (like Jolly Ranchers, but in a good way) to start. Big hit of spice on the mid-palate – allspice, clove, cinnamon – along with some dry wine-y notes and some barrel wood. Medium-dry finish with apple flavors and a little bit of tannin.

In case it isn’t obvious, we’re quite fascinated (some might say obsessed) with what makes a good cocktail; through this blog, we’ve learned a lot this year, and have come up with a number of recipes that we regularly return to at cocktail hour. We will continue to explore the wide world of mixology,  and we hope you’ll continue to be our companions in these adventures. In the meantime, pull up a chair, pop a bottle of fizzy wine, light a sparkler, and help us celebrate 🙂