Toasting the New Year with Champagne is so last year. Grab a bottle of local sparkling wine and vodka, add a scoop of sorbet, and end your night with this delicious digestif.
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Is there any more anticipated and cherished toast than the one on New Year’s Eve? When those flutes meet, we collectively put the woes of an entire year behind us and embrace hope for the year to come. Watching the countdowns roll in from Samoa and Sydney to Copenhagen and Cape Town with an awareness of that global exhale and inhale can be incredible fuel for the mind. When it comes to the palate, however, good Champagne at midnight has never made a whole lot of sense.
For the wine geeks among us, a good brut Champagne is often bone-dry, crisp and biscuity. It awakens our appetite and is known for pairing with foods that happen early in a meal—like oysters, caviar, even French fries. I don’t know about you and your group of friends, but by the time that clock strikes midnight, my crew is either ready for dessert, ready for bed or ready to be, well, put to bed. This year, I’m planning to pour a special bottle of grower Champagne I’ve been saving at the beginning of our night and serve Sgroppinos at midnight.
“Sgrop-what,” you ask? Made with prosecco, a smidge of vodka and a scoop of lemon sorbet, the Sgroppino was first poured hundreds of years ago in Venice, as an after-dinner digestif. The name comes from the Venetian word “sgropìn,” which means “to untie,” as in “untie” one’s stomach after an indulgent meal. This frothy tipple works especially well with the sparkling wines that are produced in Michigan’s Old Mission and Leelanau Peninsula AVAs—both of which just so happen to sit on the same 45th parallel as the Champagne region of France. The sugar in the sorbet makes this dessert-like cocktail more of a closing ceremony than an opening one—at least for the palate. You get to decide which of the two ceremonies is more appropriate for the mind.
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Sgroppino Cocktail Recipe
Serves 1
- 1 scoop lemon sorbet
- 1 ounce vodka
- sparkling wine, about 4 ounces
- zest from a lemon, for garnish
Directions
- Place Champagne flute into the freezer to chill.
- Once frosted, carefully drop a scoop of sorbet into the bottom of the flute.
- Pour vodka on to the sorbet.
- Fill the glass with sparkling wine, top with lemon zest and serve.
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Stacey Brugeman is a 20-year food and beverage journalist. Her work has appeared in Food & Wine, Saveur, Travel + Leisure, Eater and on Instagram @staceybrugeman.
Dave Weidner is an editorial photographer and videographer based in Northern Michigan. Follow him on Instagram and Facebook @dzwphoto.
Sarah Peschel, @22speschel, is a stylist and photographer with an appreciation for all things local agriculture, food and drink.
