Paint Your Mimosa Red

Paint your mimosa red for the holidays! Make your New Year’s Eve (or any party) special by peppering it with easy Champagne Cocktails.

Does making cocktails for holiday parties seem overwhelming? With this guide, we set you up to make six different delicious Champagne cocktails with just nine ingredients.

Just Nine Ingredients

Here are the nine simple ingredients that you’ll need to make these easy champagne cocktails:

1. Lemons
2. Frozen cranberries (get a bag or two of fresh ones and stick them in your freezer)
3. Oranges (one recipe, the one I’m giving today, calls for freshly squeezed OJ, which you will use the oranges for. But if you want, tack on an extra ingredient to your grocery list and get some store-bought “Not From Concentrate” Pulp-Free OJ. It’s nearly as good and will save you a bit of time.)
4. Orange liqueur (my favorite is Cointreau, but you can also use Grand Marnier or Triple Sec)
5. Grenadine (a sweet red syrup sold in most grocery stores. Mine is sold near the wine section. In our old Toronto grocery store it was sold near the bottled water where there was a selection of syrups for adding to drinks).
6. Stout beer (like Guinness)
7. Gin
8. Brandy
9. And of course, some sparkling wine. No need to spend a truckload on fancy stuff. Nice bottles of the Italian version of Champagne, called Prosecco (around $12/bottle), or the Spanish version, called Cava (sometimes as low as $10), or even some dry bubbly from California or Australia will work. My Advice: Go now and buy a bottle of what you think you’d like to have at your party. Chill it really really well and then try it. For the cocktails you want something dry, not sweet. But it’s o.k. if it has some background fruit flavors. Most importantly, make sure that you like it. If you do, then you’ll like your cocktails too.

Easy Champagne Cocktails

Here are the champagne cocktails that you will be able to create with the list of ingredients above.

Paint Your Mimosa Red (recipe below)
The Pink French 75
Sparkling Sangria

Paint Your Mimosa Red

I’ve started with this cocktail because it is also great for a festive brunch. You can totally serve it in the evening at your New Year’s Party, but it will work just as well if you’re having friends over the next morning or anytime during the holidays.

While a classic mimosa just adds orange juice to the Champagne, we’re adding some extra color and flavor with grenadine and lemon juice. Yum!

Here’s Easy Champagne Cocktail #1: Paint Your Mimosa Red

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This post originally appeared in December 2012 and was revised and republished in December 2020.