Champagne Cocktails: Part 3

This topic is starting to sound like a Naked Gun movie.

I had a bottle of Korbel brut in the fridge, so I decided to both catch up on and anticipate champagne recipes.

All the recipes are pretty much identical: shake up an ounce of a base spirit, half ounce of lemon juice, teaspoon of sugar, then pour a few ounces of champagne over it.

The first one, from next month in my calendar, used cognac as the base. For my first try, I used Remy Martin Grand Cru champagne cognac. I like cognac-based champagne cocktails, and this one lived up to expectations.

I just bought a bottle of Hennessy Privilege, and I used it for my second drink. Better than the Remy Martin in a champagne cocktail - much more subtle, not as strong of a cognac taste, but bringing its flavors to the party.

I did a little reading up on Hennessy to see what I was drinking: it was founded by an Irishman, Richard Hennessy, who'd been a mercenary to Louis XV. And that's about the only exciting fact in the company history, except that North Korean leader Kim I Am favors it. Maybe I could put some in a flash and fasten it to my dog Maddie's collar; she's about as big as a St. Bernard.

Today (no, I didn't drink all these in one evening) I made a champagne cocktail with Jim Beam Black label. This one didn't do it for me, the taste of bourbon with champagne didn't work. Maybe another bourbon would be better. My favorite is Woodford Reserve but I didn't have any of that on hand.

Last, I went back to the original champagne cocktail recipe from January and used gin. This time I pulled out the Tanqueray 10. I wondered how its strong herbal flavors would work with champagne. Surprising, but I like it. I'm not sure it would meld with a sweeter champagne, but the bay and lime and whatever else blend nicely with a brut champagne. I'll have to make this one again. As an aside, I'd recommended Tanqueray Rangpur to a friend as great in a gin and tonic, and he picked up a bottle. He agreed. But he's ex-navy: gin, rum - you know how those guys are.