Celebratory Cocktails

In February, I signed a book deal for my debut novel. It was the culmination of years of dreaming and at least a dozen years of hard work, learning to improve my craft and making time for my writing. At the end of all that, I was overdue for a celebratory cocktail!

Champagne often comes to mind when thinking about a celebration, and it’s hard to go wrong with a nice flute of cold bubbly. But sometimes, you want a little something more, and that’s when the champagne cocktail comes into play.

One of my favorites is the Seelbach cocktail, named for the famous old hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, where it was created. It’s a delicious concoction of bourbon, orange liqueur, champagne (or sparkling wine of any sort) and two kinds of bitters. It’s also a fine piece of fiction, in and of itself. The man who created it, Adam Seger, was the bar manager of the Old Seelbach Bar, a cozy little nook inside the grand hotel’s lobby. In 1995, he claimed to have discovered the long-lost recipe for the bar’s signature cocktail from the pre-prohibition era. He stuck to his story for two decades before finally coming clean and admitting he’d created the drink himself. You can read more about it in this story from The New York Times.

If you want to try the drink, shake one ounce of bourbon, ½ ounce of orange liqueur (I usually use triple sec, but you could use Cointreau or orange curacao if you prefer), 7 dashes of Angostura bitters, and 7 dashes of Peychaud’s bitters with ice until it is cold. Strain into a champagne flute and top it off with the sparkling wine of your choice. If you’re feeling particularly festive, garnish it with an orange twist.