hello and welcome to behind the bar with me Cara Devine and today also my good friend, sommelier
and winemaker Brodie Comer and we've just done you all a massive favor by tasting through a few
bottles of bubbles to help demystify the world of sparkling because we're just that selfless
and if you haven't seen that yet you can watch it here. In the spirit of waste not want not we
thought well we had all of these bubbles here we should probably make some drinks with them as well
now Brodie actually does do a lot more at home bartending than i do i was getting a lot
of pictures during lockdown of cocktail hour at your house which always made me quite uh jealous
um so this time around i've got her making the French 75. It's actually named after a gun that
the french army used in world war one and i think given that it literally consists of like a shot
of gin in a glass of bubbles it'd probably take you out pretty quickly as well now you
were gonna do this one with cava, why was that? Um just because it's got a finer bubble a bit
brighter acidity so great for a cocktail like this and still a little bit of that sort of
complexity to it yeah because i guess it would have been with champagne originally but you know
we don't have a massive budget here on Behind the Bar and we already drank the champagne
so we're gonna go for kind of the next best thing which is a lot less
expensive but yeah still has a lot of the characteristics that you would be looking for
um and then i kind of chose for Brodie as well to go with Tanq 10 um because it's got that
really nice like bright citrus or a grapefruit thing and obviously you've got some lemon juice
going in there as well it's all like a bright and citrusy and fresh cocktail um so something
really nice and lifted uh works as well um but really whatever gin you have to hand there's not
gonna be many that aren't gonna taste good in there so don't stress too much about it let's
get you working for your bubbles - I'm a little bit nervous about making a cocktail for you!
we're gonna do your garnish first a little bit of lemon and then i do have to make you squeeze
your own lemon juice here as well - goodness me the conditions! - and it's not easy babes.
is this the kind of cocktail that you would drink at home? this is a great
little cocktail like obviously being someone who loves sparkling wine love a cocktail or sparkling
i think this is a good one for maybe starting the you know yeah little pre-dinner cocktail
maybe yeah definitely kind of aperitify i reckon even you know maybe even like a late afternoon
yeah yeah i do like this one as well because you know sometimes you have like bubbles
with dinner or whatever and you might not quite finish um the whole bottle as much
but yeah that's literally never happened but i think some people sometimes don't finish the whole
bottle uh and in that case you know maybe it's not as nice to drink by itself the next day but it's
definitely still fizzy enough and good enough to like stick in a cocktail with some other flavors
absolutely you know again just very uh thrifty yeah um so you're going in with some
gin well that's two shots but okay all right so we're gonna go one shot of gin Brodie
Brodie didn't realise that the big side of the jigger was two shots okay so 30 mils of gin right
yeah not 60. not 60. okay look i mean obviously it depends how bad your day is i mean let's try let's
try and at least give a semblance of a responsible service of alcohol here 15 mils of lemon juice and
then just a little five to ten mils of sugar you know you do just need like a little bit to balance
out the acid we're obviously adding more acid plus there's already acid in the wine so yeah can you
adjust the sugar to your taste yeah for sure yeah i mean i'd even say like five to ten mils because
it also really depends on the wine that you're using and stuff yeah so it's the kind of thing
you could add a little bar spoon and i would go less and then try it and then if you want to add a
little bar spoon or whatever that's totally fine okay great excellent and am i icing some icing
is that enough impeccable technique yeah you don't because you are adding you know
bubbles in afterwards it doesn't need to be like a massively long shake like it's still going to get
lengthened out in terms of dilution as well and then you can do a little strain into your glass
and just to the top um it's a pretty big flute so i probably wouldn't go like the whole the way to
the top but yeah around maybe like sort of 90 mis or so about there's probably good perfect now a
little twist and then your little twist lovely ta-da that looks awesome thank you do you want
to try it for me yeah nobody ever makes me drinks i'll just have to make them myself moment of truth
that's delicious oh good super light yes super bright and fresh but like definitely quite a
complex drink as well like as much as bright and fresh it's not um yeah you would want to probably
sit on it for a minute rather than just kind of smashing it down yeah in one unlike the drinks
that i'm going to make for you which would not last very long on a sunny day i'll tell you that
um this one i'm gonna uh do is called the Hugo so this has been one of my favorite drinks since
i was at a wedding in tuscany and they were just free-flowing for a aperitivo hour because you know
it's never easy babes so this drink is actually a fairly modern invention it was invented in 2005
by Roland otherwise known as Ak Gruber in northern italy and it just riffs on what the italians do
best basically which is spritzes um so i feel like whereas the french 75 is bright and citrusy but it
still packs a punch whereas this is just really like light and bright and fresh and easy drinking
um it's not super high in alcohol either so this one actually works really well like as a jug or a
punch bowl kind of thing for picnics and barbecues and stuff so pretty perfect summer drinking
um and because it's just really meant to be really crisp and clean and fresh i am going
to go with prosecco because that's exactly what that's you know really good for and then
um for the elderflower liqueur i'm using marie brizard because that's just what we had to hand
in the bar to be honest um which has a really nice fresh elderflower flavor but obviously
St Germains your really famous one um which would work uh or you could also just do like
an elderflower cordial that you can get in the supermarket and stuff and then that way you're
not even adding any more alcohol at all um and it just keeps it like the same abv as a glass of
bubbles so i'm you know a good one if you're driving or something like that um so you can
kind of pop whatever in here the classic is sort of lemon wheels lime wheels and mint i had my head
that it had cucumber in it and so sent someone out to buy a cucumber so now i'm definitely
going to put cucumber in it because otherwise i'm just going to feel like a D***head but actually
traditionally that's not in the recipe but obviously it's gonna work well with mint and
elderflower it's not exactly you know they're all very nice easy flavors to kind of find matches for
let's go a couple little slices of lemon
and same with the lime can you kind of pre-batch this at all like say if you're having a few people
over or is that something that you could do yeah i mean you could you just probably wouldn't want to
add ice until they're basically arriving um i was you know starting to arrive just because it's you
know i'm imagining that you would be drinking this on a hot day so you don't want to leave it sort of
sweating uh for too long because it'll just get all diluted give that a little clap and pop it
in there and then the rogue cucumber this looks like summer in a glass already and then it's just
a little 20 mls of your elderflower obviously your liqueur is going to be adding a bit of
sweetness so you want the flavor but not for it to be too sweet um so you can bump it up a little bit
depending on yeah the sweetness of your liqueur and your own flavor um and your own tastes and
then we're going to go some prosecco so it's sort of about 100 ml or so so again quite a big glass
but you do want to leave some space to add ice because it is served you know as a spritz and then
you also just want a little 30 mils of soda water which might seem a bit redundant um but actually
again just with that sweetness from the liqueur like you kind of need something just to lengthen
it out a bit and stop it being too sweet uh and then i'm just going to pop in some ice
like heaps of ice because obviously as i said i feel like it's very much a hot weather drink
so you want something very refreshing and i reckon a little fun straw for this one
it's a bit comically large but there we have a Hugo beautiful thank you no problem
oh yum that's so refreshing like lots of mint and really citrusy and just bright
it's gorgeous yeah it's just super bright like definitely it feels like sunshine and a glass
absolutely and then now all we need is to be able to go to italy again
well definitely let us know in the comments if you have a sort of go-to adult fizzy drink
but there you have Brodie and Cara's sparkling cocktails so now you know