DUKAI
Dukai’s Liquor Library

Champagne Cocktail

A sugar cube, and patience

A sugar cube soaked in bitters, dropped into cold Champagne, and left to send up a thin line of bubbles for as long as the glass lasts.

  • Classic
  • Brandy
  • Champagne
  • Sparkling
  • Bitter
  • Celebration
  • Pre-Prohibition

Champagne Salon

Flute · No ice

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Ingredients

Makes
One drink
  • Champagne, very cold90 ml
  • Cognac10 ml
  • Sugar cube, soaked in the bitters1 cube
  • Angostura bitters2 dashes
  • Grand Marnier (optional)a few drops

Garnish

  • Orange zest · expressed1 twist
  • Cocktail cherry · perched (optional)1 each

Method

  1. 01

    Soak the sugar cube with the bitters and drop it into a cold flute.

  2. 02

    Add the cognac.

  3. 03

    Pour the Champagne slowly down the side of the glass onto the cube.

    Down the side. Poured straight onto the cube the glass foams over.

  4. 04

    To finish

    Express the orange zest over the glass. Do not stir.

House notes

Everything must be cold before it meets anything else, the glass included. Pour the Champagne down the side of the flute onto the cube rather than over it, or the whole glass foams over and the drink is finished before it starts.

Flute, straight from the refrigerator. Do not stir: the cube is meant to dissolve slowly and the bubbles are meant to keep working.

Perfectly paired

  • Oysters
  • Triple cream cheese

Where it comes from

US · 1862 · Documented

A Champagne Cocktail appears in Jerry Thomas's bartending guide of 1862, among the earliest printed cocktail books. What is documented there is Champagne, sugar and bitters. Brandy is not part of that formulation and turns up in later versions of the drink.

If you like this one

  • Worth comparing

    Old Fashioned

    The same idea, a sugar cube soaked in bitters, taken in opposite directions.

Please enjoy responsibly.