Champagne Cocktails: 10 Essential Celebration Drinks

Champagne's association with celebration and luxury is so deeply ingrained that it's easy to forget this is a relatively recent development. The sparkling wine we know today was largely an accident — early Champagne was still wine that, due to the cold winters halting fermentation, would begin re-fermenting in the bottle come spring, producing an unpredictable and sometimes explosive fizz that winemakers considered a flaw. The monk Dom Pérignon (1638-1715), despite the popular legend, spent much of his career trying to prevent secondary fermentation, not celebrate it.

It was English and French scientists working in the 17th and 18th centuries who figured out how to control and deliberately induce the bubbles. The méthode champenoise — inducing secondary fermentation in the bottle, then gradually removing the sediment through riddling and disgorgement — was refined over the 18th century, with the riddling technique attributed to Veuve Clicquot's cellar master in the early 1800s. The great champagne houses (Moët, Krug, Bollinger, Louis Roederer) consolidated their dominance during the Belle Époque, when champagne became the official drink of European royalty, diplomatic events, and theatrical celebration.

The 20th century expanded champagne's reach from aristocratic dining rooms to wedding toasts, race-track podiums, and, via cocktails, everyday celebration. Prosecco's emergence as an affordable alternative in the 1990s and 2000s democratised sparkling wine cocktails, while the revival of classic champagne cocktails in craft bars has restored the complexity and intentionality that differentiates a thoughtfully made French 75 from a simple glass of fizz.