Champagne Cocktail

With Jackson Cannon

Consider celebrating with this Champagne cocktail. Boston’s most famous Mixologist Jackson Cannon shows you how to make what he describes as “tart, crisp, light and refreshing, everything you want for a party drink.” In this videos Jackson shows Alessia Terranova of Gloucester how it is done. Preparing this drink involves combining a mixture of equal parts Cognac, Benedictine, Grenadine and lemon juice and then topping that off with either champagne or your favorite sparkling wine.

Ingredients

For single drink:
½ ounce Cognac (VSOP)
½ ounce Benedictine
½ ounce lemon juice
½ ounce Grenadine (if you make your own, 2 parts pomegranate juice to 1 part sugar)
½ flute of Champagne, Prosecco or other sparkling wine.
1 slice of orange peel

For party mix (10 cocktails)
5 ounces Cognac (VSOP)
5 ounces Benedictine
5 ounces lemon juice
5 ounces Grenadine (if you make your own, 2 parts pomegranate juice to 1 part sugar)
3 ounces of water (to make up for the lack of ice)
1 bottle sparking wine
10 slices orange peel

Instructions

1. To a tall mixing glass, add Cognac, Benedictine, lemon juice and Grenadine with two cubes of ice and shake.
2. Fill Champagne flute halfway and top off with the sparkling wine.
3. Squeeze orange peel (with skin side towards the glass) between your fingers to release aromatics into the drink and then run the outside of the peel around the rim of the glass.

Drink recipe courtesy of Jackson Cannon, Eastern Standard, 2009.

Mixologist At one of Boston’s most successful restaurant-bars, a head mixologist plies his craft. Jackson Cannon, 44, is Eastern Standard’s bar manager and one of Boston’s revered senior mixologists. Cannon’s cocktail style is classic, but not conservative, and he views drink making as a tool of hospitality, not as an end in and of itself. Eastern Standard’s success as a hip American bistro is partly due to Cannon’s lengthy cocktail menu which helps appeal to the broad cross-section of diners who might come from nearby Fenway Park, from the adjoining hotel or who are there just for the cocktails. It’s all balanced with top-notch front-of-house service that keeps locals coming back. Cannon is foraying into largely uncharted territory for modern American mixologists: the art of making homemade vermouth. Along with the help of other protégés he’s trained and other vermouth enthusiasts, he’s creating his own recipes and laying the groundwork for one of the next trends in artisanal mixology.