Champagne Mocktails

Valentines day is upon us and here is how you can make endless Valentines day cocktails with just 3 ingredients! Which are all non-alcoholic. That’s right, we’re talking Champagne Mocktails.

Valentines day has always been a difficulty for people who are single, that we know, but what we don’t talk about nearly enough is the pressure of drinking. Whether your in a relationship or not, you’re either pressured to drink to drown your lonely sorrows or pressured to drink to have a good time and celebrate your love.

Well not this year.

What is Non-alcoholic Champagne?

Non alcoholic champagne has been getting better and better. Awhile a go, I wrote this article about what exactly is non alcoholic wine, where I go into the details about how exactly it is made.

Champagne always had a rough time. It’s not easy to make good alcoholic champagne never mind good non alcoholic champagne. But in recent times, they have been getting better and better.

Lyres Classico Non-Alcoholic Champagne

I’ve been working with Non-Alcoholic beverage producer and all round deliciousness gurus Lyres, in particular, I’ve been playing around with there Non-Alcoholic substitute for sparkling wine, Lyre’s Classico, and thought to myself “you know, this would be great for Valentines day”

That being said, the easiest thing you can do to still celebrate Valentines day with your significant other, or likewise drown your sorrows alone, without the need of alcohol, is to pick up a bottle of Lyre’s Classico.

It’s got the classic flavours you would expect from a sparkling wine and all the frill of popping a bottle open, but completely zero proof.

However, I am the mindful mixologist after all, so I have to share a way of enjoying this Non-Alcoholic ‘Champagne’ in a more hands on fashion.

Which means… Champagne cocktails. Not to be confused with a classic champagne cocktail. However, if you wanted to create a Non-alcoholic or low alcoholic version of a classic champagne cocktail using Lyre’s Classico, that would totally work.

How to make endless Non-Alcoholic Champagne Mocktails

So, here’s the 411 on what we’re going to do. We are going to create an array of flavoured sugar syrups which we can then use to create a variety of Non-Alcoholic champagne cocktails. This is the same idea I covered last year with my endless prosecco cocktails article. In fact it’s exactly the same, this year however, we are going to focus on doing it Non-Alcoholic. In that post I did mention the ability to make these alcohol free with soda water, but since Lyres Classico has launched this year, it’s even closer to the real thing.

What you will need

• Champagne Glasses

• Lyre’s Classico Non-alcoholic Sparkling Wine

• Variety of Fruit your favourites

• White Sugar

Method

In a pan, combine equal parts sugar and water. 300grams of sugar and 300ml of water will work great for around 300-400ml of end sugar syrup.

Bring that mixture to a boil whilst stirring to dissolve all the sugar.

Whilst the sugar is dissolving, prepare your fruit. meaning if you have larger fruit, peaches or oranges, cut them into smaller chunks.

After all your sugar has dissolved, add in half the amount of fruit as you did water. I used raspberries, meaning I added 150grams of raspberries to my 300grams of sugar and 300ml of water mixture.

Simmer your fruit for 15 minutes, if possible, such as with berries and softer fruit, use a back of a spoon to muddle them into the mixture to extract more juices and flavours.

Allow your mixture to cool and bottle it up. Cute swing top bottles that you can self label are great for this, especially if you’re planning a Valentine’s day Cocktail party.

How to serve

Add 15ml of your fruit syrup or however much you like to a champagne flute, then top it the rest of the way with Lyre’s Classico. Which is currently on amazon for under £10, or a case of 6 for under £60.

The way this becomes endless and how it gets fun is when you create a few different syrups.

What I do, is create a raspberry syrup, a blackberry syrup and a strawberry syrup. I then leave them nicely chilled and bottled on a table along with the popped bottle of Lyre’s Classico and a few punnets of berries. After that its a case of help yourself. Maybe i’ll have a sweet 20ml raspberry syrup to 100ml sparkling wine cocktail with an added raspberry, then I might have a 5ml drizzle of blackberry with a topping of Classico.

To make it really versatile you can then start combining syrups - 5ml of blackberry syrup in the glass, 10ml of raspberry on top of that then top with bubbles, that right there is a mixed fruit Kir Royal. The the more syrups you have the more possibilities for serves become endless, and the beauty is that yes you followed a basic serve recipe, and yes you followed a syrup making recipe, but how much you add and what you create is completely your own unique cocktail recipe.

Oh, and when you find your perfect ratio of syrup to Classico, don’t forget to name the serve, every cocktail needs a name after all!

Happy Valentines Day

Hi, I’m Cameron, guv’nor of Smartblend. If you’ve enjoyed this recipe, take a look at some more non-alcoholic recipe below. For more Lyre’s specific recipes check out the Lyre’s section here.