It's the last week of December. Champagne is on the list for midnight, and you'd rather not be shaking drinks at 11:55. That calls for one or two champagne cocktails that are mostly done before the first guest knocks.
Every drink here has a step you can finish in the afternoon, and most run on a modest bottle of bubbly. The bottle you pour on its own at midnight can be a different one, and that's where spending a bit more makes sense.
Classic Champagne Cocktails for New Year's Eve
A champagne cocktail is sparkling wine poured over something with backbone: a spirit or liqueur, some citrus or sugar, and bitters or a twist. Strictly speaking, Champagne only comes from France's Champagne region, fermented a second time in the bottle. In a mixed drink, any dry sparkling wine works.
The shaken drinks are the ones that keep you busy. Anything assembled in the glass takes seconds, and even the shaken ones can have their base mixed hours early, with the bubbly added as each glass goes out.
1) Classic Champagne Cocktail
The category is named after this drink, one of the oldest mixed drinks still poured. Jerry Thomas printed a version in his 1862 bar guide.
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Ingredients: 1 sugar cube, 2 to 3 dashes aromatic bitters, 4 oz chilled brut, optional ¾ oz cognac
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Glass: champagne flute
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Garnish: lemon twist
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Build: soak the cube with bitters, drop it in the flute, add the cognac if using, top with brut
As the cube breaks down, it gives the wine something to form bubbles on, so a steady column rises from the bottom of the glass for as long as the drink lasts. Angostura bitters are the standard. Peychaud's is a fine swap that's brighter and leans toward anise.
Adding cognac or brandy is a common variation that makes the drink rounder and warmer, and Hennessy VS is a sensible bottle for it.
Ahead of time: dash bitters onto the sugar cubes an hour or two early and line them up on a plate. At midnight, each drink is a cube, a pour and a twist.
2) French 75
Named for a French field gun of World War I, the French 75 was in print by the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book. Gin, lemon juice and simple syrup get shaken and topped with Champagne, and it's what most bartenders pour when asked for a champagne cocktail.
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Ingredients: 1 oz gin, ½ oz fresh lemon juice, ½ oz simple syrup, 2 to 3 oz brut
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Glass: champagne flute
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Garnish: lemon twist
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Build: shake gin, lemon and syrup with ice, strain into the flute, top with brut
The gin sets the flavor. A London dry like Tanqueray, Bombay Sapphire or Ford's keeps it crisp and citrusy. Hendrick's makes a softer, more floral drink.
Some bartenders swap in cognac and argue that's the older recipe. Keep the same specs, and the Hennessy above works.
Ahead of time: mix the gin, lemon and syrup in a pitcher and keep it in the fridge. Shake each round with ice when it's time to serve, then top with brut.
3) Kir Royale and Kir Impérial
The Kir started in Burgundy as white wine with cassis and takes its name from Félix Kir, a postwar mayor of Dijon. Swap the still wine for sparkling and you have the Kir Royale: two ingredients, deep ruby in the glass.
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Ingredients: ½ oz crème de cassis (black currant liqueur), about 4 oz dry sparkling wine
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Glass: champagne flute
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Garnish: none needed
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Build: liqueur in the glass, top slowly with sparkling wine
For a Kir Impérial, use raspberry liqueur in place of the cassis. Chambord is the usual pick. With either liqueur, start at ¼ oz and work up, because past ½ oz you stop tasting the wine.
Ahead of time: pour the liqueur into the flutes before guests arrive. The wine mixes it in as you pour, so there's no stirring, and it's the fastest drink here to serve to a full room.
4) Seelbach
Named for the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, this is a bourbon drink with a lot of bitters behind it. The pre-Prohibition backstory once told about it turned out to be invented in the 1990s.
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Ingredients: 1 oz bourbon, ½ oz Cointreau, 7 dashes aromatic bitters, 7 dashes Peychaud's, about 4 oz brut
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Glass: champagne flute
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Garnish: orange twist
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Build: combine bourbon, Cointreau and both bitters in the flute, stir once, top with brut
Fourteen dashes looks like a typo, but the bitters dry the drink out and add a spiced, clove-like finish. It's the richest drink on the list and the one to make for a bourbon crowd.
Ahead of time: batch the bourbon, Cointreau and bitters together and chill. Each drink takes a little under 2 oz of base before the wine.
5) Death in the Afternoon
Ernest Hemingway gave Death in the Afternoon to a 1935 cocktail book, and his recipe is absinthe topped with cold Champagne. Anise leads, the drink is dry and potent, and it turns cloudy as the wine hits the absinthe.
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Ingredients: about 1 oz absinthe, about 4 oz cold brut
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Glass: champagne flute or coupe
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Garnish: none
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Build: absinthe in the glass, top slowly until it clouds over
Ahead of time: Death in the Afternoon needs nothing but cold wine.
6) Airmail
Aged rum, lime and honey are shaken and topped with brut, so it drinks like a tart, honeyed daiquiri with bubbles. Pour it for anyone who likes rum or a sour.
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Ingredients: 1 oz aged rum, ½ oz fresh lime juice, ½ oz honey syrup, 2 to 3 oz brut
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Glass: champagne flute
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Garnish: lime wheel
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Build: shake rum, lime and honey syrup with ice, strain, top with brut
Ahead of time: stir equal parts honey and warm water into a syrup, which keeps for a couple of weeks in the fridge, and batch the base the same way as the French 75.
Lighter, Fruit-Forward Champagne Cocktails
These drinks get most of their flavor from juice or liqueur, so they're easy to keep drinking across a long night. They're also forgiving of an inexpensive bottle, since fruit and sugar cover most of the differences between modest sparkling wine and pricey Champagne.
1) Bellini
Giuseppe Cipriani created the Bellini at Harry's Bar in Venice in the 1940s, with white peach purée and prosecco. Prosecco is still the traditional match, and La Marca Prosecco has enough fruit of its own to sit well with the peach.
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Ingredients: 2 oz white peach purée, about 4 oz prosecco
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Glass: champagne flute
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Garnish: none needed, or a thin peach slice
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Build: purée in the glass, add prosecco slowly, stir gently once
White peaches are out of season at New Year's, so buy the purée frozen or in a jar. Peach nectar works in a pinch, though it's thinner and sweeter.
Ahead of time: thaw and chill the purée the day before. Spoon it into the flutes before guests arrive, and only the prosecco is left to pour.
2) Grand Marnier Mimosa
A splash of orange liqueur gives the standard mimosa more depth and a little more strength. Our guide to the best champagne for mimosas covers which bottle to use in the plain version.
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Ingredients: ½ oz Grand Marnier, 2 oz fresh orange juice, about 3 oz brut
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Glass: champagne flute
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Garnish: orange twist (optional)
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Build: Grand Marnier and juice in the glass, top with brut
Ahead of time: stir the juice and Grand Marnier together in a chilled pitcher, then top each glass to order.
3) St-Germain Spritz
Elderflower liqueur, bubbly and soda over ice make a floral, lower-alcohol drink that stays cold and fizzy in the hand for a good stretch of the evening.
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Ingredients: 1½ oz St-Germain, 2 oz brut or prosecco, 2 oz soda water
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Glass: wine glass, filled with ice
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Garnish: lemon twist
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Build: St-Germain over ice, then the wine, then the soda, stir once
Ahead of time: chill the St-Germain, the wine and the soda. With everything cold, the drink takes about ten seconds to build.
4) Pomegranate Champagne Cocktail
This one is mostly about color: a deep red drink for the party, with pomegranate seeds that keep drifting around the glass.
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Ingredients: ½ oz pomegranate liqueur or 1 oz pomegranate juice, about 4 oz brut
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Glass: champagne flute
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Garnish: a spoonful of pomegranate arils
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Build: liqueur or juice in the glass, top with brut, drop in the arils
Stirrings Pomegranate is the liqueur we'd use, and juice gives a tarter drink. For a similar red built on cranberry and orange liqueur, the Poinsettia recipe is in our Christmas cocktails guide.
Ahead of time: seed the pomegranate in the afternoon and keep the arils covered in the fridge.
The Best Champagne for New Year's: One Bottle to Mix, One to Toast
Once you add orange juice or cassis, most of the toasty, brioche-like detail you pay for in Champagne disappears into the drink. A modest bottle is the right tool for mixing. A pricier one from our New Year's champagne picks shows what it can do in a glass on its own at midnight.
If you're picking that toasting bottle, our guide to the best Champagne brands sorts the houses by style and price. Save any vintage bottle for the toast as well, poured with nothing added, and the same goes for limited releases like the Dom Pérignon Takashi Murakami edition.
Bottles we'd reach for, roughly by price:
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Cook's Brut: a California sparkling wine, dry enough for a French 75 and fine in anything with juice
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La Marca Prosecco: fruit-forward and the natural fit for the Bellini and the mimosa
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Piper-Heidsieck Brut: crisp, lively Champagne that holds up in the Seelbach or a toast
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Moët Impérial Brut: rounder and fruitier, a good fit for either job
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Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label: fuller-bodied, and better saved for the toast
1) Champagne vs. Prosecco vs. Cava
Champagne goes through its second fermentation in the bottle, the traditional method, which gives it toasty notes and fine, steady bubbles. Prosecco is made from the Glera grape and fermented in large pressurized tanks, so it comes out fruitier, with bigger bubbles and usually a lower price tag.
Cava from Spain and Crémant from French regions outside Champagne are made the same way as Champagne but usually sell for far less. Both run drier than prosecco, which makes either a strong mixing choice.
Match the wine to the drink. Dry, toasty sparkling wine suits the spirit-heavy drinks like the Seelbach and French 75, while prosecco fits the Bellini and the mimosa.
2) How to Read the Sweetness Label
Sweetness labels on sparkling wine run backward from what most people expect: Extra Dry is sweeter than Brut. Here's the scale in grams of sugar per liter:
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Brut Nature: 0 to 3
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Extra Brut: 0 to 6
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Brut: under 12
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Extra Dry: 12 to 17
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Dry (Sec): 17 to 32
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Demi-Sec: 32 to 50
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Doux: over 50
When the mixer is sweet, like a liqueur or juice, buy Brut or drier so the drink doesn't turn syrupy. Extra Dry can work against something tart or bitter, like the lemon in a French 75, though you may want to cut back the simple syrup.
Demi-sec is too sweet for nearly every drink above. It's a better match for dessert.
How to Build a Champagne Cocktail
Everything should go in cold. A bottle needs at least three hours in the fridge, and if you're short on time, a bucket of ice water with a handful of salt chills it in 20 to 30 minutes. Put the glasses in the fridge too.
Sparkling wine goes in last and never goes in the shaker, since shaking flattens it and can pop the lid off the tin. Hold the glass at about 45 degrees and let the wine run along the inside, which keeps the foam in check and saves more of the fizz.
If a liqueur sits at the bottom, give the drink one gentle stir with a bar spoon. Any more and you knock out the fizz. When opening the bottle, keep a towel over the top, grip the cork firmly, twist the bottle beneath it, and point the neck at a wall.
For glassware, a champagne flute keeps bubbles longest. A coupe is pretty but loses its fizz sooner, and a wine glass is the right call for spritzes over ice.
Planning New Year's Eve Cocktails for a Party
1) How Many Bottles to Buy
A 750ml bottle holds about 25 ounces. That's five full flute pours, or six to eight cocktails topped with 3 to 4 oz each.
For a party, plan on roughly half a bottle per guest over the night, then add one bottle per six guests for the midnight toast. Twelve guests works out to six bottles for drinks and two for the toast.
For a big room, splits make the toast easier. La Marca 187ml bottles and Barefoot Bubbly Brut Cuvée 4-packs give each guest one glass with nothing left over to go flat, and they're easy to hand out right before the countdown.
If you do end the night with an open bottle, a sparkling wine stopper keeps it fizzy for one to three days.
2) Batching for a Crowd
Anything without bubbles can be mixed in advance. The liquor, juice and syrup go in a pitcher in the afternoon, and the wine goes in when you serve.
For a champagne punch, set the base in a bowl over one large block of ice, which melts slower than cubes. Pour in the sparkling wine once guests are ready to drink it, and add more as the bowl empties.
Our holiday cocktails guide has more on batching and quantities for a crowd.
3) A Zero-Proof Glass for Midnight
Anyone not drinking should still have something to raise at midnight. Top a non-alcoholic aperitif like de Soi Golden Hour with soda water, or open a non-alcoholic sparkling wine, and serve it in the same flute with the same twist as everyone else.
The Bellini and the juice version of the pomegranate drink also work with alcohol-free bubbles. Our non-alcoholic shelf has more options.
Two Drinks and a Bottle Count for Midnight
For most parties, a French 75 and a St-Germain Spritz cover the room, with the gin base mixed in the afternoon. Buy a dry brut or prosecco for mixing, look for Brut on the label when the drink has juice or liqueur, and set aside one better bottle for the toast.
Plan on half a bottle per guest plus one per six for midnight, with a few splits on hand. Get the bottles and glasses into the fridge by early afternoon, and the only job left at 11:55 is pouring.
