Anthony: Welcome to the art of the drink video Podcast. My name is Anthony Caporale [banging sound] and we are on our last week with our December drink art girl Tracy. Thanks for working with a hon.
Tracy: Your welcome, it is been awhile and I had a good time.
Anthony: Had a great time working with you. I hope you come back.
Tracy: I will.
Anthony: All right. So, working on up on New Years Eve, so I am going to do a Champagne Cocktail.
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Anthony: For two reasons, one is the quite essential New Years Eve direct right?
Tracy: Yes.
Anthony: And two, people will going to be opening a lot of champagne on New Years Eve and I do not know about you but it seems to me like a lot of people are not that couple of opening Champagne [laughing]
Tracy: Yes I never open a bottle of Champagne.
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Anthony: All right, so let us start with our Champagne flute. Like I said, we are going to start -- the drink as a Champagne Cocktail. Basically, the Champagne sugar in bitters,
Tracy: Okay.
Anthony: Alright, but it is all on how you make it. And traditionally, you need to use a sugar cube. Alright, and then couple of dashes what is called angostura bitters and angostura bitters if you never used them before, it is a preparation of bitter herbs, fruit extracts, prepared in alcohol. It is alcoholic when you buy it to supermarket, all right.
Tracy: I never seen that at the grocery store before.
Anthony: Yes. You can get it usually in the drink and what it does is it off sets the sweetness of drinks.
Tracy: Okay.
Anthony: All right, so two dashes of biters and now the Champagne. What I am going to be opening today is a bottle of cheap Champagne because 90% of the Champagne that is open on New Years Eve is cheap champagne.
Tracy: Cheap champagne.
Anthony: Exactly. Which mean, plastic cork and plastic cork will a little bit difficult to deal with the real cork.
So, that is why I am going to show you how to do.
Tracy: Okay.
Anthony: So, let us start -- I like to start with the wine too actually. Now, you can I do not know whether you can be able to see or not but the Champagne as a little metal tab under there and what I like to do is spy on that and kind of pry it up.
Now some Champagne bottles will actually have a plastic wrapper, a little plastic ribbon that goes around like on the CD case, right where you can pull, but just in case yours, does not. It gives you a little bit nicer opening if you just score it with a wine tool.
Tracy: Okay.
Anthony: All right, and then you can just go ahead and take foil and the foil will lift right off.
Tracy: Okay.
Anthony: All right on that, again, gives you a nice finish look on it. Now two parts to cup bottle Champagne is the cork which in this case it is plastic like I said, and there is the cage which is the middle part and the cage is what keeps the cork on in case the Champagne warms up or it is drop or agitated in keep support from pumping off because it is highly carbonate, okay.
First thing we are going to do is take the cage off and from the minute that I loosen this cage forward I want to have at least one finger over the cork the whole time.
Tracy: So does not flying up into the air?
Anthony: So it does not flying up into the air right, right. Contrary to popular opinion, you do not a cheap cork cross the room because it actually can be dangerous. You want to kick the cork on until you are ready to take it off and then you want it to come off very-very gently and slowly. I will show you how to do that, alright?
So first thing I want to do is untwist this cage, counter clockwise, and loosen it up. Now, I am going to transfer my finger underneath the cage and take the cage off and now my other finger is holding the cork the whole time, all right?
Now, I am righty so I put my left hand on the cork and my right hand on the bottle and my fingers are grasping just the cork. My right hand is holding the bottle firmly. Now, this is the whole key, I am going to twist the bottle not the cork.
Tracy: Okay.
Anthony: All right, so I hold the cork with my left h
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