In my family, we have several holiday traditions. The Christmas tree always goes up the day after Thanksgiving. On Christmas Day, I always have to make a ham with a brown sugar crust, for sandwiches. There would be a mutany, if cinnamon sticky buns were not for breakfast. Then, of course, is New Year’s Eve. So, for the period between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, bubbles are a must. But we don’t just have bubbles, it’s Mimosas and St.-Germain Spritzes.
When I’m making a cocktail using wine, I want to use a wine that I can drink on it’s own but is not expensive. You can use either Cava or Prosecco for these types of drinks but my choice is usually Cava. The method of making Cava is the same for making champagne but the grapes are different and Cava is Spanish, not French. The Cava I used this holiday season is the Freixenet Cava Brut Cordon Negro. It is nice to drink on its own, but works really well in mixed cocktails and at an alcohol level of 12% abv, you can sip on it all day and not be useless. The grapes are Macabeu, Xarel-lo and Parellada and the secondary fermentation happens in the bottle for 18 months.
For Christmas Day, it’s Mimosas. However, for New Year’s Eve, it’s St.-Germaine Spritzes.
They are a little more special and fitting for bringing in the new year. St. Germain is an elderflower liqueur and like it sounds, adds a subtle floral note to anything you add it to. St. Germain is distilled using 1,000 hand picked elderflower blossoms, which must be fresh and undamaged at the start of the maceration process. Here is the recipe I use for making these spritzes:
- 1.5 oz St. Germain
- 2 oz Freixenet Cava
- 2 oz Club Soda
- 1 lemon twist
The St. Germain is the most expensive ingredient in this drink, selling at $35.99 for 750 ml. However, since you only use 1.5 oz, it breaks down to $2.12 a drink. The Freixenet was on sale and is normally around $12.00. At the sale price, the Cava breaks down to $.70 a drink and the club soda is $.18 a drink. The total cost for this cocktail comes to a grand total of around $3.00 per drink, which is about half of what you would pay if you were to pay for it at a restaurant.
After the year that everyone had, it was appropriate to close things out on a special and festive note. It was important to me to bring in the new year with a feeling of positivity, hopefulness, and a feeling that many special things will be coming in 2021. I think that these drinks helped accomplish that. Here’s to 2021!