Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, The Blue Horizon!

It's spring. Time to enjoy the pretty things in life, like champagne cocktails.

Possibly the prettiest drink I’ve ever made.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. I have been yearning to write a light, delicate, springlike cocktail for this column — something gentle and festive for the season. The news and the weather have consistently crushed my dreams. No more. We’re drinking a shiny, happy champagne cocktail for Easter weekend, dammit. Let’s make a Blue Horizon. Here’s the recipe.

Blue Horizon

3-4 oz Brut sparkling wine

1 ½ oz Empress 1908 Indigo Gin

¾ oz honey syrup

¾ oz lemon juice

Stir the honey syrup and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker. Pour into a champagne flute and top with prosecco, leaving room for the gin. Slowly layer the gin over the cocktail. Top with a lavender champagne cocktail air and an edible flower.

Lavender Champagne Air

3 g sucrose esters

7 oz prosecco

3 oz creme de violette

Using a milk frother, combine the esters, prosecco, and creme de violette in a wide-mouthed beaker. Aerate the liquid with a fish tank bubbler. Scoop off the foam as needed for a garnish. Aerate the liquid as needed to generate more foam.

Yes. It’s come to this. It’s 2026, and Hooper is telling you how to make the air on top of the cocktail from scratch.

An explanation is probably in order. Many cocktails finish the drink with a frothy head. Egg white cocktails, like the infamous Ramos Gin Fizz, are a prime example. But different foams have different purposes. Egg whites add a silky smooth mouthfeel to a drink. A whipped cream topping is a treat in itself. A cocktail “air” is a light, tasteless pile of bubbles that uses sucrose esters as a foaming agent. I know, scary chemical name — it’s a palm oil derivative, it’s perfectly safe. This stuff will turn any liquid into a foam with the consistency and body of shaving cream.

Ok, but ... why? Aroma. When you bring this drink to your mouth, the scent of champagne and violets is overwhelming. It’s like having a glass of champagne with a glorious head of sparkling fizz, only the fizz never dies down, and somehow the champagne smells like flowers. The drink tastes good, but the cocktail air makes it smell like heaven, and scent is an integral component of taste.

No, you do not have to create air from scratch to enjoy this drink. Skip that bit. Seriously, I know that 99 percent of you wouldn’t even consider it. I’m showing it off because it took weeks to get the foam’s consistency right, and I’m kind of proud of it. When you go to a great cocktail bar like Hemingway’s, and you see “cocktail air” on the bar menu, you can explain it to your date with a knowledgeable smirk on your face. How the rest of your date progresses from there is up to you, but at least I’ve given you a leg up on it.

The air isn’t the only sorcery in this glass. Empress 1908 Indigo gin is infused with pea blossom tea, which changes color from purple to blue when the pH is low enough. Stir this cocktail after service, and the purple head on the drink transforms into a glass of sky-blue goodness. The gin’s quite tasty in its own right as well. We haven’t had enough pleasant surprises this year. This cocktail is probably a good place to start.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Ingredient shot. The alchemy is in the beaker over there.

Brut sparkling wine: I like a less-sweet cocktail, so I prefer Brut here. Prosecco is perfectly fine, however. Drink what you like.

Empress 1908 Indigo Gin: You could use another gin here, but if you do, don’t bother layering it on top of the cocktail. Mix it with the lemon and honey — you’ll have a perfectly nice Bee’s Knees cocktail, and drinking it will make you happy.

Honey Syrup: 50/50 water and honey, mixed until smooth. Without dilution, the honey is too thick to be usable. An organic or single-source honey would be nice here, but I’m not convinced you could taste the difference in this drink.

Lemon juice: Always fresh. Accept no substitutes.

Lavender Champagne Air: It’s important to mix the esters thoroughly into the liquid. A battery-powered milk frother will do the trick, but in a pinch, stirring the fluid well will get the job done. I used a $30 battery powered aquarium bubbler with a stone tip to generate the bubbles; it works like a dream.

My home bar is Hemingway’s Underground, the hottest cocktail bar in pretty little Medina, Ohio. I’m behind the stick Wednesday-Saturday, 4-10. Last call’s at midnight. Swing on by, and I’ll make a drink for you … or anything else from our little Happy Hour here at Wonkette.

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