Sparkling cocktails

What it is

Wine with bubbles, used here as the thing that lengthens the drink rather than the thing you taste first. Every drink in this group is built on it.

Where it came from

Bubbles in wine were a fault before they were a feature, and were called the devil's wine for blowing up cellars. The second fermentation was brought under control in Champagne over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the tank method that made it cheap arrived in Italy in the early twentieth.

Worth knowing

Champagne is a place, not a style, and only sparkling wine from that region may use the name. It is bottle fermented, which gives the bready, biscuity note. Prosecco is Glera, fermented in tank, fruitier and softer, and is what a Bellini actually calls for. Cava is Spanish and bottle fermented like Champagne. Crémant is French, made the same way, from anywhere but Champagne. For a cocktail, dry and cheap beats fine and expensive: anything delicate is lost the moment it meets the peach purée.