Dry January 2023 – In Winter
Let us start with Dry January. I have a non-alcoholic cocktail forn you that is great for celebrating. It uses a great, high-quality non-alcoholic pear Cidre and an excellent Rooibos tea.
Joerg Geiger makes excellent fruit Seccos. The top of their line is the Champagner Bratbirne which now also is available without alcohol. During the production aged pear wine is bottled fermented. The pear sparkling wine stays for three years on the yeast and afterwards the alcohol is removed. This is done via vacuum distillation.
Spicy pear notes
The C. Bratbirne non-alcoholic starts with clear pear notes. Furthermore, you will notice fresh citrus notes. After a short while you get cinnamon and other spices. It is complex and you taste that the bubbles come naturally in the non-alcholic pear Cidre. I was a bit surprise how dry it is, but that’s actually a great thing. All in all, this really is a great substitute without alcohol for sparkling wine!
Non-Champagne Cocktail
My idea for a non-alcoholic cocktail using the C. Bratbirne was to recreate the Champagne Cocktail. The easy part was to throw in a Demerara sugar cube. However, how to replace the bitters was more tricky. – I know some non-alcoholic drinks use bitters, because the overall ABV is very, very low, but I did not want to use any alcohol at all. – In the end, I brewed a very strong spiced Rooibos tea from Samova.
Top off with Joerg Geiger C. Bratbirne non-alcoholic
Built – chilled Champagne glass – top off with no ABV pear sparkling wine;
Garnish: No garnish; Song: Matthew and the Atlas – In Winter;
First off, you notice the pear no-ABV sparkling wine with its fruity notes. However, the Rooibos tea with its warming spices nicely shines through. Depending on how fast you sip the “In Winter”, the drink will become sweeter through the sugarcube. Obviously, the drink tastes very different from the original Champagne Cocktail. Nevertheless, the result is a balanced drink without alcohol!
