Champagne & Tears: Drink a Black Velvet for St. Patrick’s Day
I was at a little dinner party recently for someone who ambivalent about marking yet another birthday past 50. “It’s champagne or tears at a time like this!” one of the guests with a talent for bon mots rasped. Champagne and mourning don’t seem to go together; in fact Salvador Dali called champagne and other sparklers the wines of frivolity in his book The Wines of Gala, which is artistic, trippy, insightful and back in print. Yet those two sentiments do share a glass in the unique cocktail known as the Black Velvet. The Black Velvet, a mix of bittersweet chocolate-hued Guinness stout and golden champagne is a drink that’s on the menu of most Irish and English pubs, but it doesn’t seem to get much play outside of these outposts of British and Irish culture. But it’s a peculiarly pleasing drink that has a interesting tale attached to it. …
March 16, 2010