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New Year's Champagne Cocktail: The Wintergreen
Here's another New Year's Eve Champagne cocktail. Want more? Drink up!
It's the frostiness in mint that reminds me of winter. I love how it leaves an icy trail as it goes down. And to me, nothing is more dead-of-winter than New Year's Eve: Perhaps because we girls are relegated to little dresses in even smaller temperatures. Recall the season of the snowmen as you celebrate around a toasty fire with this wintergreen cocktail. Champagne is mixed with sweet mint syrup and crème de menthe, and crowned with a mint-green wreath of mint sugar. Cool.
About the author: Kerry Saretsky is a Serious Eats intern and the creator of French Revolution Food, where she reinvents her family's classic French recipes in a fresh, chic, modern way.
You will get between 10 and 12 from two bottles of Champagne
New Year's Champagne Cocktail: The Wintergreen
About This Recipe
Ingredients
- For the Mint Simple Syrup
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 stems fresh mint (each has about 6-10 leaves on it)
- For the Mint Sugar Garnish
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 stems mint, leaves plucked from the stalk
- 1 slice lemon
- For Each Wintergreen
- 1 1/2 tablespoons mint simple syrup
- 1 tablespoon cold clear crème de menthe
- Champagne, chilled
- Mint sugar for garnish
- mint leaf for garnish
Procedures
-
1
Make mint simple syrup : put sugar, water, and mint in a saucepot, and bring to a boil, stirring so sugar dissolves. Shut off the heat, and allow syrup to come to room temperature. Remove the mint.
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2
While syrup is cooling, make mint sugar by combining the sugar and fresh mint in a mini food processor. Blitz the two until completely combined into a mint-green sugar. Place the mint sugar on a salad plate.
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3
Rub the slice of lemon around the rims of the champagne flutes. Dip the wet rims into the mint sugar. It should stick and form a sparkling crown on the glass.
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4
Trying to avoid disturbing the sugared rim, pour 1 1/2 tablespoons mint simple syrup and 1 tablespoon clear crème de menthe into the each champagne flute. Top with champagne; be careful not to pour too quickly, or the fizz will ruin the sugar rim. Float a single mint leaf in each glass.
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