Which Buck’s Fizz should you have for Christmas breakfast? I tried 10 to find out

The first mention of the mimosa in print, according to The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, is in French, in L’Art du Shaker, also published in 1925 by Dominique Migliorero of the New-York Bar in Nice, and involves half and half orange juice and champagne served in a balloon glass over ice. Pretty much the same, you might think, but to mixologists the addition of ice or grenadine is a serious matter, as well as the choice of glass. 

As time rolled on, things got boozier. The 1936 classic The Artistry of Mixing Drinks by Frank Meier of the Ritz in Paris, describes a Buck’s fizz as the juice of half an orange, half a teaspoon of sugar and half a glass of gin (30ml, just over a standard shot) strained into a wide fizz glass and topped up with champagne.

These days the pendulum has swung the other way. In her book Spirited Adrienne Stillman says that a Buck’s fizz has just champagne and orange juice, while a mimosa includes an additional splash of triple sec (orange liqueur) and “it is much better with it”. 

Other recipes say Buck’s fizz has two parts champagne to one part orange juice while a mimosa has equal parts of each – or sometimes two parts orange juice to one part champagne. 

As for the supermarket bottles, no actual sparkling wine has gone near them. Instead, the cocktail is mixed with still wine that is then carbonated. It’s a common technique used by sparkling ready-made cocktail producers; Moth does a version of a French 75, classically made with champagne, using carbonated wine instead. It’s really rather good.

Aldi’s ingredients, meanwhile, include something called “made-wine”, which turns out to be a term covering everything that isn’t spirits, beer, cider or wine made from grapes, but is “made from the alcoholic fermentation of any substance or the mixing of wine with another substance”. That covers lots of “country wines” like elderberry, but no one is suggesting that the supermarkets are foraging in the hedgerows. 

All credit to Aldi, though, for actually listing the ingredients. Alcoholic drinks don’t have to include a list, and plenty of the supermarkets don’t bother. Moth lists the French 75’s “key ingredients” as “pink gin, fizz, lemon”, which sounds to me like it is hoping we’d mistake “fizz” for sparkling wine. 

Meanwhile, the Drugs, Alcohol & Justice Cross-Party Parliamentary Group is lobbying for it to become a requirement that booze has to list ingredients. Put me down as a supporter. 

Hawkings kindly helped me to taste 10 bottles. They weren’t a patch on making your own, we agreed, but as a low-cost, low-booze bottle (most come in around 4% alcohol and some are under £3) they are an appealing way to pop a cork and be festive. And, yes, I’d rather drink some of these than prosecco at three times the price. Just don’t take your eye off the scrambled eggs. 

The taste testFizzling out