The 5 Best Mixers For Sparkling Wine

When it comes time to ring in the New Year, there's one drink that pretty much has to fill your glass: Champagne (or sparkling wine, the generic term that includes less pricey drinks like Prosecco, Cava, and spumante). Sparkling wine is a go-to for any celebration, especially in the winter holiday season, but sometimes you want to elevate it even further or expand your sparkling drink repertoire. Adding a mixer to your bubbly can transform your celebratory toast from hum-drum into holiday magic.

Because of its crisp, light flavor and delightful effervescence, it's not hard to find creative ways to drink sparkling wine. You can use it to top off most of your favorite cocktails or add it to sorbet for a decadent dessert drink. A special sparkling cocktail doesn't have to take too much time, money, or effort. These mixers will please your party guests and make your celebration one to remember without making your head spin.

You might never have heard of crème de cassis, but hopefully you've encountered the delightful aperitif it spawned: Kir Royale. Crème de cassis is a sweet French liqueur made from blackcurrants, and when combined with Champagne or another kind of sparkling wine, it becomes the two-ingredient cocktail Kir Royale.

Crème de cassis is a perfect liqueur to mix with sparkling wine and serve to guests before a dinner party. The berry sweetness perfectly complements dry, crisp Champagne or Prosecco, and the warm red color they create together looks picture-perfect. You can play around with amounts depending on your desired sweetness, but the most typical recipe calls for a six-to-one ratio of sparkling wine to liqueur. If, for some reason, crème de cassis doesn't suit you, you can try swapping it with the black raspberry liqueur Chambord for a stronger fruit flavor. Either way, make sure to top your drink with a fresh raspberry for an effortless winter cocktail.

Like crème de cassis, St-Germain is a sweet liqueur that adds a lovely dimension to Champagne, Prosecco, or another sparkling wine. It's an elderflower liqueur with a floral, delicate flavor and a pale gold color. While elderflower is more associated with spring or summer than with winter, it can still make for a fresh and festive spritz.

The great thing about an elderflower liqueur, cordial, or even syrup, is the versatility. You can simply mix St-Germain with Prosecco and a dash of soda water and lemon, or make a French Blonde, the citrusy take on the French 75, which combines sparkling wine and elderflower liqueur with gin, Lillet Blanc, and grapefruit juice. There are still a host of other combinations to be made with elderflower liqueur and sparkling wine, since neither has a particularly dominating flavor. Lychee juice, apple cider, rose syrup, and fresh rosemary are just some of the many elegant ingredients you can add.

If you're looking to make a cocktail with sparkling wine that has a bit of a stronger kick, gin should be your go-to spirit of choice. Gin mixes great with sparkling wine in part because of its botanical juniper berry notes, which tend to give it a less alcohol-forward flavor than other hard liquors. This pairing forms the basis for some iconic cocktails, like the lemony, historically named French 75, but it also invites endless variation and exploration.

You could pretty much add gin to any of the berry or elderflower liqueur-based spritzes we've already mentioned, or lean into citrus notes and play around with aromatic bitters. Gin is also a great spirit to base a sparkling holiday punch around, whether you choose to flavor it with cranberry juice, fresh citrus fruits, Lillet Rouge, or even scoops of vanilla ice cream and orange sherbet in the shape of a snowman.

Mixers that pair brilliantly with sparkling wine are bittersweet, herbaceous liqueurs such as Aperol and Campari. Depending on who you ask, these liqueurs are sometimes categorized as apéritifs of the amaro variety or as bitters. Though slightly different in flavor and color, Aperol and Campari are best known for their inclusion in spritzes, a kind of cocktail typically made from Prosecco, a bitter liqueur, and soda water. Given the iconic status of Aperol and Campari Spritzes, it's no wonder that an Italian apéritif is one of the best mixers available for sparkling wine.

You might be tempted to pause here and complain that an Aperol Spritz is much more of a summer cocktail than something you could serve on New Year's Eve. That might be the traditional way of looking at it, but the deep, bittersweet flavors of this orange liqueur are surprisingly winter-appropriate. You can even go a step further and put an autumnal twist on an Aperol Spritz by using a seasonal juice or syrup flavored with cranberry, apple, or persimmon.

The most iconic sparkling wine cocktail is probably the simple yet elegant mimosa. Known as the go-to brunch cocktail, the juicy combination of Champagne or Prosecco and orange juice is one that never fails to delight even those who aren't big fans of alcohol — though you can easily make a mimosa mocktail with sparkling white grape juice. It might not be the best drink to serve on New Year's Eve, but it is the perfect choice to keep the party going on New Year's Day breakfast.

While freshly squeezed orange juice is the standard mimosa mixer, it's not the only option. Brunch restaurants often offer grapefruit, pineapple, cranberry, and even more exotic juices on their mimosa menus, so why shouldn't you? To mix it up, you could also put out peach puree to make the close cousin of the mimosa, the Bellini.

Don't think you have to splurge for expensive Champagne to make a mimosa or Bellini bar worth visiting, either. The Bellini cocktail was created with Italian Prosecco in mind, and cheaper sparkling wines are better for diluting with fresh fruit juice than the delicate top-shelf stuff, anyhow. The best sparkling wine for mimosas (and Bellinis) will be crisp, refreshing, and dry. Your juice mixers already have plenty of sugar, so to avoid a sweetness overload, look for sparkling wine bottles with "brut" on the label.