Ryan Chetiyawardana’s Bottled Fizz Cocktail Recipe

The batching method for the Bottled Fizz involves mixing the bulk of the liquid ingredients into a single bottle and chilling it in the refrigerator until you’re ready to serve your guests. Serving is as simple as mixing the matched mix with a quantity of champagne-style sparkling wine and garnishing with some fresh herbs. Feel free to use a gin of your choice or a different spirit altogether. In this recipe, a London Dry Gin adds a good balance of floral and herbaceous juniper notes.

The Bottled Fizz is a vermouth-and-gin cocktail recipe inspired by the French 75—gin, Champagne, simple syrup, and lemon juice shaken together and garnished with a lemon twist. This recipe skips the cocktail shaker for a batched drink. The ingredients you’ll need are:

1. 1. Dry vermouth: Vermouth is an aromatized and fortified wine with Italian origins. Aromatized refers to the botanicals and flavorings added to the wine, and fortified means that additional alcohol is added. It's an important ingredient in the Negroni (equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari), Manhattan (rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, and angostura bitters), and Martini (six parts gin to one part dry vermouth). Vermouth can either be dry (less than 4% sugar) or sweet (10–15% sugar). Vermouth cocktails often reference the type of vermouth in the name: A dry martini is made with dry vermouth, whereas a "perfect martini" is made with equal parts dry and sweet vermouth. (A “perfect Manhattan” is also made with equal parts dry and sweet.) Dry vermouth is always white in color, but some white vermouths can be sweet (called “vermouth bianco”). Sweet vermouth can also be red (“rosso”) or pink (“rosé” or “rosa”).
   
2. 2. London Dry Gin: London dry gin is a classic gin, the kind you'll typically find in a gin martini or gin and tonic. London dry gin doesn’t always come from London, but it does have a juniper-forward flavor and no artificial flavoring. It can only have 0.1 grams of added sweetener per liter—that's what makes it dry.
3. 3. Rhubarb liqueur: Rhubarb liqueur has a tangy-sweet flavor that hints at springtime.
4. 4. Chocolate bitters: If all you have in your bar kit is orange bitters, you're missing out on a world of flavor. The chocolate bitters in this cocktail recipe complement the gin nicely.
5. 5. Sparkling wine: Sparkling wine puts the fizz in the Bottled Fizz. Look for a sparkling white wine similar to Champagne, and keep it chilled.