Drink - Victoria Moore puts the fizz back into rainy May mornings
So often, a Buck's Fizz is like an effete and clammy handshake when it should be as fresh and determined as a young fellow wooing his girl. Grown-ups drink it in a lily-livered, joyless sort of a way, adding prudent orange juice to water down champagne at parties they're not prepared to invest hazy hours in. This apologetic mixing of juice and champagne invariably produces a dejected glassful of stubbornly taste-free liquid that does not merit the gleeful ring of the flutes it is served in. It is a concoction redolent of disjointed evenings wasted with dull strangers in ritzy venues.
Then there's the ready-made version bottled for the mass market. This combines the anticipation provided by a heavy-bottomed glass bottle and a stiffly wired, bursting-to-pop cork with the reality check of Buck's Fizz-ade. It washes down sandwiches at a slightly damp picnic just fine, and it is good for breakfast on workday birthdays because really it's pretending to be alcohol. It is also brilliantly, profligately cheap. What I cannot forgive it for is infiltrating our collective consciousness like a computer virus and erasing all memories of the original drink.
No matter that Buck's Fizz is often seen as a way of eking out champagne so that more can enjoy it, New Statesman readers may forsake it utterly when they learn that it is by birth a Tory drink. I urge equanimity. Buck's Fizz was invented at the place from which it takes its name - the exclusive Buck's Club, in London's Mayfair, which offers honorary membership to all Conservative prime ministers (John Major caused a few stiff lips to wobble by turning it down; William Hague was less discerning). The original cocktail was invented in the 1920s. The club's founder used to enjoy golfing weekends in France ("Deauville or Le Touquet, I forget which," says the present secretary) accompanied by his barman. On one of his visits, he tasted a cocktail, made by an American, combining champagne, peach juice and one other ingredient. On his return, the Buckmaster asked his barman to replicate it. Peach juice could not be found, so it was replaced with the orange juice. And the other ingredient? It remains a dark secret known to only two or three living men and women. "Not many people can make a good Buck's Fizz," sighs the secretary as he invites me to taste theirs one evening. "Marks and Spencer tries, but . . ." His sentence trails into disillusioned silence.
It's strange, but I can't find a recipe for this cocktail in my drink library. Maybe most bartenders consider it too obvious. For Buck's Fizz, I don't think you need to bother with Grand Marque champagne. The orange juice, however, is critical. Best of all is freshly squeezed, and by that I mean that you should take some actual oranges and go to the trouble of wringing the juice out of them yourself rather than collecting it expensively (and less freshly) from the supermarket shelf. Next best is juice from blood oranges, as good as you can buy. I like Tropicana's Sanguinello; if you flinch at the price, then think how much you're saving by using a decent dry sparkling wine or a cheap champagne, and how much you pay for a decent brand of tonic water or, indeed, any other mixer, and it won't seem so bad.
Both ingredients should be chilled. Pour the champagne first, then stir in a generous slug of orange juice. I like it mixed with between half and two thirds orange juice, the rest champagne, but you need to taste it to see how it is. Get it wrong either way and it will taste diluted. Be warned, though, that a robust Buck's Fizz will make you hanker for smoked salmon on rye, especially at breakfast time. Even on the darkest of rainy May mornings, it's worth getting up for.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by using the 'report this comment' facility or by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
