SLOSHED! » sparkling wine

Champagne Soyeux

Marleigh — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:50:36 +0000

Recently, I found myself working on a traditional Christmastime cocktail recipe for Serious Eats: the Soyer au Champagne. A rather unique pairing of champagne and vanilla ice cream with a couple splashes of liqueur, it is most certainly a dessert cocktail and a rather oddball one at that. Those who enjoy champagne know that it is most frequently enjoyed in its drier, crisper incarnations—a strange bedfellow for a rich, sweet, velvety custard. But the combination can work (particularly when you use a sweeter sparkling wine), and sipping on one I couldn’t help but imagine the varied possibilities for the form… especially when I considered a mash-up with one of our favorite champagne cocktails.

Enter, then, David Lebovitz’s recipe for absinthe ice cream, which had been eyeballing my Cuisinart ICE-50BC ice cream maker for some time. We are lovers of anise in this house, so absinthe ice cream wasn’t much of a stretch, and we drink a slightly embarrassing number of Death in the Afternoons when we have sparkling wine in the house. Naturally, I couldn’t help myself. After much experimentation, here is the result—and a delicious one, at that! (...) Continue reading Champagne Soyeux

Content © 2010 Marleigh Riggins Miller / Daniel Miller / SLOSHED!. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: absinthe, champagne, cocktail, Grand Marnier, ice cream, orange, sparkling wine

Sparkling Ginger Daisy

Marleigh — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:20:00 +0000

This drink comes as part of a virtual cocktail party from the book Spice & Ice. I first met Kara Newman as part of Tales of the Cocktail 2009, when I interviewed her for the Tales Blog. She had recently published a book of spicy cocktails—titled Spice & Ice—and was moderating a panel of the same name during Tales. Kara writes a regular column for Chile Pepper Magazine called “High Spirits,” which “focuses on spirits and cocktails with bold flavors, as well as drinks appropriate for pairing with the fiery foods”. Her interest in cocktails grew out of an event featuring Dave Wondrich and Audrey Saunders, and her work for Chile Pepper was a natural growth of that spark and her obsession with food.

Kara reached out to me to write about one of the cocktails from the book, with the direction that re-working the recipe was encouraged. I am a born tinkerer and can’t resist playing with even the most standard cocktail recipe, so the challenge appealed to me.

After reviewing the list of drinks, I settled on the Sparkling Ginger Daisy, a mix of gin, ginger liqueur and sparkling wine. The original was good, but I was sure I could take it apart and pull together an all-new remix, so I set about doing just that. (...) Continue reading Sparkling Ginger Daisy

Content © 2010 Marleigh Riggins Miller / Daniel Miller / SLOSHED!. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: aperol, cava, cocktail, gin, ginger, lemon juice

101 Champagne Cocktails

Marleigh — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:13:38 +0000

Happy Election Day, everyone! Like most of you, I’m going to spend the rest of the day glued to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Comedy Central (Daily Show/Colbert Report special!) watching the results roll in. I have CNN.com set up to track the local results I care most about (just say no to prop 8, yes on prop 2). I have a fridge full of beer and a bar full of booze to drown my sorrows if any of the unmentionables happen. I am so ready for this. I don’t think I’ve been this amped about watching election returns since I spent a cold night in November 2000 at work with friends, watching five computer monitors light up blue, red, red, red…red. I have much higher hopes for tonight.

In the mean time, I have a book review that should keep everyone’s spirits up. A few months back I received an email about a new book coming out, 101 Champagne Cocktails by Kim Haasarud. I’m not usually much on single-subject cocktail books—you know, the kind that are full of drinks that end in -tini and mostly consist of various flavored vodkas. However, I made an exception for this one because I love sparkling wine and because I’ve been favorably impressed with Kim Haasarud’s recipes in the past. For those of you who are unfamiliar with her, Ms. Haasarud is a consultant based in Los Angeles and she’s written three previous books: 101 Margaritas, 101 Sangrias and Pitcher Drinks and 101 Martinis. Heh. See what I mean about the -tini thing? (...) Continue reading 101 Champagne Cocktails

Content © 2008 Marleigh Riggins Miller / Daniel Miller / SLOSHED!. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: basil, champagne, cherry, cocktail, gin, grapefruit, maraschino, reviews, rum

Sea Captain’s Special

Marleigh — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:00:51 +0000

I found this stashed in Esquire Drinks in the chapter on what to imbibe when you’re dealing with having had a bit too much. I didn’t realize this at the time, as I was looking for something to make with an open bottle of cava, so the hefty pour of whiskey didn’t seem strange to me at all.

When I came back to the book to begin this post, I realized that this is a tipple for the morning after and nearly choked. If I tried to drink one of these the next day, I’d wind up spending more time cuddling the porcelain teddy bear, not less. And really, with a title like Sea Captain’s Special, would you expect a drink that coddles? I didn’t think so, either.

(...) Continue reading Sea Captain’s Special

Content © 2007 Marleigh Riggins Miller / Daniel Miller / SLOSHED!. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cocktail, liqueurs, rye, sparkling wine, whisk(e)y

East Hollywood Sparkling Sangria

Marleigh — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 15:49:30 +0000

Happy Mixology Monday! Another month has passed and our intrepid host, Gabriel at cocktailnerd, has chosen “fizz” as his theme.

Fizzy ingredients are everywhere in cocktails. Tonic water, club soda, ginger beer, soda, mineral water, champagne…the absolutely overwhelming number of choices made this month’s challenge interesting. There are so many choices, it was hard to settle on just one.

In the end, I decided to try my hand at something of my own making. Los Angeles has lately been awash in a sea of wine bars, many of them hip to the point of pain, but my favorite place to drink wine is the Colorado Wine Company in Eagle Rock. (I feel slightly guilty giving away the name of my favorite wine hideout, but it’s such a great little place I feel obliged to share.) We generally gather some friends and head over for their Sangria Saturdays, which features Eagle Rock White Sangria, a fruity, spicy concoction of their own devising. I’ve been otherwise engaged for the past three Saturdays and have been unable to indulge, so I set to work in the kitchen to make my own version of their delicious, prosecco-topped creation (also being aware of our host’s affection for the bubbly). For those of you outside LA, this comes pretty close. For those of you who live in LA, I highly recommend swinging by to get a glass of Colorado’s delightful original.

(...) Continue reading East Hollywood Sparkling Sangria

Content © 2007 Marleigh Riggins Miller / Daniel Miller / SLOSHED!. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cocktail, housemade, mint, peach, sangria, sparkling wine

Murder By Death

nerdling — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 08:00:01 +0000

Toward the end of the sparkling wine, my boyfriend issued a challenge: he wanted a drink with Campari and champagne. The other ingredients and the manner of its creation were up to me. Thus, the Murder By Death was born. (And, by being the one responsible for the concoction’s creation, he was also the one who named it.)

I dug through my liquor cabinet and refrigerator in search of the perfect ingredients. I pulled out things that looked promising: cherries, simple syrup, sake, vodka, lime cordial. Not everything was going to make the cut, but I had a nice stable of ingredients to choose from. (...) Continue reading Murder By Death

Content © 2005 Marleigh Riggins Miller / Daniel Miller / SLOSHED!. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cocktail, liqueurs, sake, sparkling wine

Juniper Royale

nerdling — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 08:00:01 +0000

Mmmmm, gin and champagne. Perhaps no one else will think so, but the Juniper Royale sounded positively yummy.

Adding orange juice and cranberry juice to champagne makes nice drinks individually, so together, and with gin, it looked like a winning combination. This deduction was verified by the experiment, which was a terribly anti-climactic result after some of the other (more surprising) champagne drinks. (...) Continue reading Juniper Royale

Content © 2005 Marleigh Riggins Miller / Daniel Miller / SLOSHED!. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cocktail, gin, sparkling wine