Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

The best Champagne cocktail recipes to level up your New Year’s Eve party

These bubbly Champagne cocktails will have you feeling fizzy all night

Lindsay Parrill
By
Hands toasting with Champagne
Xeniya Kovaleva / Pexels

Is there anything more festive than a good glass of Champagne? This bubbly drink has the power to transform any humdrum gathering into a sparkling good time more than any other beverage, we’d argue. The beautiful glassware, the way the bubbles tickle your nose, the fact that we raise it in the air when voicing our hopes and well wishes — all these things combine to give us the world’s happiest drink. Alone, Champagne is all these things and more. But when you add to it a few more delicious ingredients, something magical happens.

While the fizzy sweetness of Champagne remains the star of the show, mixing it into cocktails allows other flavors to shine along with it and create a Champagne drink that matches the mood of your party perfectly. Feeling natural and sophisticated? Add a little elderflower and pear to your Champagne. In the mood for a little holly and jolly? Toss a candy cane in your flute for an extra Christmasy cocktail.

Recommended Videos

While a glass of Champagne is fabulous on its own, these Champagne cocktail recipes will really liven up your party any time this holiday season.

Glasses with bubbling Champagne
Narek87 / Shutterstock

Champagne cocktail tips and tricks

  • Each of the below recipes is for two cocktails, but they can easily be scaled up for a larger crowd.
  • If you’re hosting a larger crowd and don’t want to spend all evening playing bartender, you can mix large batches in pitchers or punch bowls. Just don’t add ice or the Champagne until serving because…
  • Champagne is best just after opening. To avoid losing any of those delicious bubbles, add the Champagne to the rest of the ingredients just before drinking.
  • If it’s a more casual get-together, a DIY Champagne cocktail bar is always a fun idea. Simply set up a bar station complete with clearly labeled ingredients, a cocktail shaker, and a little sign with instructions. Guests will have a great time mixing their own drinks!
  • Be sure that your Champagne is properly chilled before serving. The ideal temperature should be between 46 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
  • If mixing with other particularly sweet ingredients, we recommend using a Brut (dry) Champagne to avoid an overly sweet cocktail.
Pear elderflower Champagne cocktail
Yes to Yolks

Pear elderflower Champagne cocktail

(From Yes to Yolks)

Related

The bright and fruity freshness of elderflower is the perfect accent for the combination of crisp pear and sweet, bubbly Champagne. Together, they’re a burst of refreshment and flavor that make for the perfect party cocktail for any occasion or any time of year.

Ingredients

  • 2 ounces pear nectar
  • 2 ounces St. Germaine elderflower liqueur
  • 8 ounces chilled dry Champagne or sparkling wine
  • Fresh pear, thinly sliced, for garnish (optional)

Method

  1. Pour 1 ounce each of pear nectar and elderflower liqueur into two glasses and top with the Champagne. Garnish each glass with a slice of pear and serve.
Sparkling fig cocktail
Barley & Sage

Sparkling fig cocktail

(From Barley & Sage)

Elegant, simple, and timeless, this sparkling fig cocktail combines the earthy sweetness of fig with the sparkly pop of Champagne with the addition of some vodka to give it a much welcome kick. The result is exquisite and perfect for any holiday get-together.

Ingredients

  • 4 fresh figs
  • 4 teaspoons sugar
  • 3 ounces vodka
  • 8 ounces Champagne or sparkling wine

Method

  1. Into a cocktail shaker, put the figs, sugar, and vodka and muddle until the figs have released all of their juice.
  2. Strain the mixture into two coupe glasses and top with chilled Champagne.
Citrus pomegranate Champagne twist
Half-Baked Harvest

Citrus pomegranate Champagne twist

(From Half-Baked Harvest)

This gorgeously fruity Champagne cocktail is not only beautiful but full of festive flavor. We love the combinations of fizz and fruit, accented by Champagne’s signature bubbles.

Ingredients

  • 16 fresh mint leaves
  • 4 tablespoons pomegranate juice
  • Juice from 1 orange (regular or blood orange)
  • 2 ounces Cointreau 
  • 4 ounces of ginger beer
  • Champagne or Prosecco, chilled, for topping
  • Pomegranate arils and orange slices (for serving)

Method

  1. In a cocktail shaker, combine mint, juices, and Cointreau. Fill with ice and shake for 1 minute.
  2. Strain into two Champagne or wine glasses filled with ice.
  3. Add the ginger beer and top with the Champagne.
  4. Serve with pomegranate arils, orange slices, and mint.
Sparkling raspberry Champagne float
Modern Farmhouse Eats

Sparkling raspberry Champagne float

(From Modern Farmhouse Eats)

Serve this beautiful and unique beverage as either a cocktail or a dessert, and we’re guessing that all of your guests will be absolutely delighted with the results. Feel free to mix up your fruit and sherbet varieties for lots of flavorfully festive combinations.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup fresh or frozen raspberries, plus more for garnishing 
  • 1 ounce lime juice
  • 2 ounces vodka
  • 2–6 scoops raspberry sherbet
  • Champagne
  • Fresh mint for garnishing (optional)

Method

  1. In two glasses, muddle together the raspberries, lime juice, and vodka.
  2. Add the sherbet and top with Champagne.
  3. Garnish with raspberries and mint, and serve.
Peppermint white Christmas cocktail
Freutcake

Peppermint white Christmas cocktail

(From Freutcake)

This holiday cocktail is a little bit “on the nose” when it comes to festive drinks, but we don’t care. The refreshing peppermint and bubbly Champagne make for the most celebratory of combinations, and we can’t get enough.

Ingredients

  • 2 ounces White Creme de Cacao
  • 10 ounces Champagne
  • 2 candy canes, crushed (for the rim)
  • 2 whole candy canes (for garnish)

Method

  1. In a zip-top bag, crush 2 whole candy canes into a fine powder.
  2. Dip the rims of your Champagne flutes into a small dish of White Creme de Cocoa, then roll in the crushed candy canes.
  3. Add White Creme de Cocoa to Champagne flutes and top with chilled Champagne.
  4. Garnish with candy canes and serve.
Cranberry 75 cocktail
Katie Stryjewski

Poinsettia

(From Basil and Bubbly)

You really can’t get a more apt name for a cocktail for your Christmas/New Year’s Eve party than the Poinsettia. Named after the ubiquitous Christmas flower, the Poinsettia gets its name from the striking red color that matches the petals of the poinsettia flower. The red comes from the cranberry juice and the whole cranberries in the garnish. It really is the holidays in a Champagne flute. As with all of our recipes, this is scaled for two cocktails, you can adjust the ingredients depending on the size of your party.

Ingredients

  • 7 ounces Champagne
  • 4 ounces cranberry cocktail juice
  • 1 ounce Grand Marnier or Cointreau
  • Whole cranberries (for garnish)

Method

  1. Pour half of the cranberry juice and Grand Marnier or Cointreau into a Champagne flute.
  2. Top with the Champagne and stir once to combine.
  3. Serve with a cranberry garnish if desired.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Lindsay Parrill
Lindsay Parrill
Contributor
Lindsay is a graduate of California Culinary Academy, Le Cordon Bleu, San Francisco, from where she holds a degree in…
This is what ‘DOC’ and ‘DOCG’ mean on your wine labels
Do you know which is the best?
Wine bottles

Italian wine is truly a thing of beauty. The whole of Italian culture is beautiful, to be sure, but it just isn't a truly picturesque Italian fantasy without a gorgeous bottle of wine in the picture. There's something so romantic, so luscious, so sexy, and rich about a perfect Italian wine, and it's one of our very favorite indulgences. Unfortunately, the nuances of Italian wine are also incredibly complex, and understanding how these bottles are ranked and classified is a whole other - perhaps less sexy - artistic experience.

When perusing the aisles of your local wine store, you may see a few familiar Italian names peppering the shelves. Words like Sangiovese, Chianti, and Moscato d'Asti are all warm in their familiarity, filling us with images of the Italian countryside and romantic gondola rides. But then there are words that may fill you with confusion, letters like "DOCG" or "IGT" marked on the label, making your head spin with all of the possible hidden meanings behind such mysterious acronyms.

Read more
Does bourbon go bad? The storage tricks you need to know
Does bourbon actually go bad?
Bottles

If you enjoy a glass of bourbon or two only every few weeks or months, you might assume that your favorite whiskey, safe in its bottle, will last for years. Well, it might, and it might not. This depends on several factors.

If you haven’t yet opened your bottle, you’re totally in the clear. Since bourbon is bottled at no less than 40% alcohol by volume, there’s little chance bacteria and any oxidation will get in and change the aromas and flavors. It’s also done aging once it hits the barrel, and most (if not all) of the air is removed, so it should taste just as good years later as long as it’s stored properly (we’ll get into that later). If it’s opened already, this is when things start to get tricky.

Read more
Our 5 favorite scotch drinks, ranked
The best scotch drinks, ranked
Whiskey cocktail

Scotch whisky suffers from a lot of assumptions. If you aren’t an avid Scotch drinker, you might assume that all Scotch whisky is overly expensive and thus not used for mixing into cocktails. You might also assume that the only way to enjoy Scotch whisky is to sip it slowly out of a Glencairn glass.

While myriad expensive single malt Scotch whisky expressions will cost you more than your car payment (and beyond), and there are countless single malts and blended Scotch whiskies that deserve to be sipped neat, there are also a lot of scotch whiskies well-suited for mixing. There are also a handful of great, flavorful cocktails that were created to highlight these complex Scotch whiskies.

Read more