Cocktails of the Week - Russian Spring Punch and Parisian Spring Punch

We did a couple more champagne cocktails last night. My wife brings home some bottles of the Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut sparkling wine every year from the company Christmas party, so we usually have a sufficient supply of champagne around. And it makes a surprisingly good mixer for plenty of interesting cocktails. So here's a couple more, both from my New Classic Cocktails book.

Russian Spring Punch

• ice cubes
• 1/2 oz creme de cassis (Gabriel Boudier)
• 1 oz lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons simple (sugar) syrup
• chilled Champagne (the aforementioned Roederer Estate)
• 2oz Vodka (Stolichnaya)

Fill a sling glass (a nice tall thin one) with crushed ice and add the cassis, lemon juice and simple syrup. Add the vodka and top with Champagne at the same time. By adding them together, you prevent the Champagne from fizzing over the top. You can decorate it with a lemon slice and berries.

I made a couple of discoveries during the week and this cocktail (the "classic" one) used both. The Gabriel Boudier Creme de Cassis is a delicious French cassis, missing from my liquor cabinet for far too long, and I finally found a dusty bottle of it at a New Hampshire liquor store. It goes great over vanilla ice cream too, I have to add! Also, I finally tracked down a bottle of the Nantucket Off-Shore simple syrup, as I'm too darned lazy to make my own. I did find a note in one of my cocktail books to the effect that these days you can use caster (or superfine) sugar rather than going the whole way to simple syrup (which is merely sugar water). But I'm glad I found a local purveyor of the Stirrings products, and appreciate them getting back to me about local sellers. If you want to find someone local to you, be sure to just drop them an email. Their web site is Stirrings.com. I, of course, am too proud and picky to try their mixers, but the Simple Syrup, bitters and rimmers are some great products.

This was a pretty good cocktail, and went down easy. Maybe a few too many ingredients, as it was hard to tell them apart.

Parisian Spring Punch

• 1 1/2 oz Calvados
• 1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 oz vermouth (always Noilly Prat here, as recommended by the book)
• 1 teaspoon fine caster (super-fine or bar) sugar
• chilled Champagne

Put the Calvados, lemon juice, vermouth and caster sugar in a shaker with crushed ice and mix thoroughly. Strain into a sling glass over crushed ice and top with Champagne. Decorate with apple slices.

I have to admit, we didn't use Calvados. I have some, but am not crazy about it. I prefer Lairds Applejack, and so we used that instead. And this "twist" was a much more subtle cocktail the classic, and I liked it alot.

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