Easy Cocktail Recipes

As with all juleps, the mint needs crushing or mudding first to help release its flavor into the sugar and water. Simply chopping it won’t produce enough flavors.

If you don’t have any champagne available, then look for a good sparkling white wine, or even a sparkling red, to use in this cocktail.

Do use a dry champagne, or even a good sparkling wine, for cocktails where you add sweet ingredients and especially if you want to sugar the rim of the glass for extra sparkle.

Champagne cocktails tend to be better and better the more you drink.

A romantic era produced some delightful music and this elegant drink brinks that mood bang up to date.

This bright and cheerful cocktail is easy to prepare for lots of guests and you certainly don’t need to wait for Christmas to enjoy it.

For a very special occasion like a golden wedding anniversary, you could float tiny pieces of edible gold leaf on the top of each glass.

This is a wonderful cocktail for a special occasion in the summer. Designed for two to share, perhaps as engagement or a romantic alfresco dinner would be appropriate. For the more prosaic, serve in tall, chilled tumblers, rather than a pineapple shell.

Both rum and bananas are naturally associated with the tropics, but wine does not spring so readily to mind when the Caribbean is mentioned. However, remember that France shares a long history with many of the Caribbean Islands, such as Martinique and Guadeloupe.

This is a delicious way to turn a simple sparkling white wine into a sophisticated cocktail. Probably not the time to use expensive champagne.