Thank Malachy McGarry from London, Frank Meier of the Ritz Hotel in Paris, and Alfred Hitchcock (yes, that Alfred Hitchcock) for inventing, recording the recipe for, and popularizing the mimosa as a brunchtime beverage in the United States, respectively.
In the early 1920s, McGarry was the barman at London’s Buck’s Club. He was the first to serve one part orange juice to two parts champagne, which he called Buck’s Fizz. Circa 1936, in his book The Artistry of Mixing Drinks, Meier listed the OJ-to-bubbly ratio in a mimosa as 1:1. The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink claims that Hitchcock made the mimosa into a blockbuster brunch beverage in Hollywood sometime around 1945.
The ease with which these drinks are made, the lengths to which adding fruit juice to the flute can stretch a bottle of sparkling wine, and the variety of fruit juice products and bubbly beverages on the market all contribute to the continuing popularity of mimosa-mimicking cocktails. Here we offer a few mimosa-like recipes that have Maine-made products in the glass.
Cheers!
