Mimosa
The Mimosa is equal parts sparkling wine and fresh orange juice, and the equal-parts pour is both its signature and its civilising feature. Half wine, half sunshine, low enough in strength to have three of across a morning, which is exactly what a brunch table wants. It is credited to the Ritz Paris in 1925 and named for the yellow bloom of the mimosa tree. London had got there four years earlier: Buck’s Club was pouring champagne and orange from 1921 under the name Buck’s Fizz, at two parts wine to one of juice. The two cities have disputed the territory politely ever since. The Fizz is older, and the Mimosa travelled further. There is exactly one rule and it is not about the wine. The orange juice must be fresh, and the drink is unusually unforgiving about it, because the wine’s dryness amplifies everything a carton gets wrong rather than covering for it.
Glassware: Champagne Flute
Garnish: None traditionally: the colour announces itself
Ingredients
75ml
The 1925 Ritz pour, and the name on the drink. The official specification writes prosecco instead, which is the sensible reading on the merits rather than a correction: half of this glass is orange juice, and nothing that makes a serious champagne worth drinking survives being cut fifty-fifty with it. Whatever the bottle, chill it hard and pour it gently.
75ml
The other half, and the whole quality question. Squeezed at the table, because the wine's dryness amplifies everything a carton gets wrong and there is nothing else here to cover it.
Instructions
Chill the flutes properly before you start.
Pour the cold fresh orange juice into the flute first.
Top slowly with the champagne.
Give one gentle lift with a spoon and serve immediately.
Source: the IBA (Official IBA specification; method ours). Last checked 13 August 2026.
Expert Tip
Juice first, wine second. Pour it the other way round and the champagne foams up against the juice, and you spend the next minute waiting for it to settle having lost a third of your bubbles doing it. Squeeze at the table. This is half orange juice by volume and nothing else is in the glass, so it exposes carton juice faster than any other drink. Fresh juice also separates within about twenty minutes, which is the real argument against batching a jug. Buy the wine on dryness and temperature rather than on prestige. A good crémant or cava under fresh juice is the sensible pour, and vintage champagne in a glass that is half orange juice is money set on fire.
Flavour Profile
Two Cities, One Drink
The Ritz Paris claim dates the Mimosa to 1925 and names it for the mimosa tree's yellow flower, which the drink resembles.
Buck's Club in London had been pouring champagne and orange juice since 1921, under the name Buck’s Fizz, at a different ratio: two parts wine to one of juice. It is the older drink by four years and it is genuinely a different one, being noticeably drier and stronger.
The two have been politely disputed ever since, and there is no need to settle it. The Buck’s Fizz kept the British wedding and the christening; the Mimosa took the world's brunch tables. Same idea, different proportions and passports.
The Equal Split
Half and half is what makes the Mimosa what it is, and it is worth resisting the instinct to lean toward the wine.
At equal parts the drink comes in at roughly beer strength. That is the entire social function: it is something you can have several of across a long morning without the morning going anywhere unexpected.
Push it toward the wine and you have made a Buck’s Fizz, which is a fine drink and a different one with a different job. Push it toward the juice and you have made orange juice with a gesture in it.
The Juice Is the Craft
This is the whole of it. Half the glass is orange juice and there is nothing else in the drink, so there is no ingredient anywhere doing the work of covering for it.
Carton juice has been pasteurised, which cooks off the volatile aromatics and leaves a flat, slightly jammy sweetness. In a glass of orange juice on its own that is tolerable; against dry sparkling wine it is exposed completely, because the wine's acidity throws the difference into relief rather than masking it.
Fresh juice also settles and separates within about twenty minutes of squeezing, which is why a batched jug is a worse idea than it looks.
The Wine Question
Brut and cold outranks grand, and by a considerable margin.
The official specification names prosecco, and the reasoning holds. A serious champagne is worth drinking for its complexity, its autolytic depth and its finish, and none of that survives being cut fifty-fifty with orange juice. What the drink needs from the wine is dryness, acidity and carbonation. Prosecco supplies all three, and so do a good crémant and a decent cava, for a fraction of what a grand marque costs.
Champagne is where the drink started and it is never wrong, but it is rarely worth the money once the juice is in. The one thing to avoid is anything off-dry, because there is sugar in the juice already.
How to Serve It
Cold flutes, juice first, wine second, one gentle lift with a spoon. Assembled at the table by the round rather than batched in a jug.
Immediately. A Mimosa that has stood for five minutes is flat sunshine, and the second pour from a jug is noticeably worse than the first. It costs nothing to open the bottle as you go.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the correct Mimosa ratio?
Equal parts champagne and fresh orange juice, which is the 1925 Ritz Paris pour. Lean heavier on the wine and it becomes a Buck’s Fizz by lineage, which runs two parts wine to one of juice.
Does the champagne need to be good?
Cold and brut matter far more than prestige. A decent crémant or cava is the sensible pour under fresh juice, because none of what makes a serious champagne worth drinking survives being cut fifty-fifty with orange.
Mimosa or Buck’s Fizz?
Same idea, different ratio and passport. The Mimosa splits evenly, Paris 1925; the Buck’s Fizz runs two parts wine to one of juice, London 1921. The Fizz is older by four years, and the Mimosa travelled a great deal further.
Can I batch it for a crowd?
Not well. Fresh juice separates within about twenty minutes and the carbonation goes flat, so the second pour is noticeably worse than the first. Assemble at the table by the round instead, which costs nothing but a little attention.
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Buck’s Fizz
The Buck’s Fizz is the older sibling in the orange-and-champagne family, and the British one: invented in 1921 by barman Malachy McGarry at Buck’s Club in Mayfair, four years before the Ritz Paris poured its Mimosa. The club version ran the wine at twice the juice, a gentleman’s ratio for a drink designed to make morning drinking respectable, which in 1921 Mayfair counted as a public service. The heavier wine changes the character honestly. It is drier, brisker and more obviously a champagne drink wearing a splash of colour, where the Mimosa is a true half-and-half. British weddings adopted it as liturgy, Christmas mornings followed, and the name entered the national vocabulary thoroughly enough to be borrowed by a Eurovision act. At two to one the champagne is genuinely tasted rather than merely present, so the bottle earns rather more consideration here than it ever does under a Mimosa, and the drink repays it with the extra crispness that is its whole point.
Bellini
The Bellini was born at Harry’s Bar in Venice, perfected through the 1940s by founder Giuseppe Cipriani and named in 1948 for the painter: the drink’s soft pink, Cipriani said, was the colour of a robe in a Giovanni Bellini altarpiece. White peach purée and prosecco, in a bar that also invented carpaccio and served everyone from Hemingway to Chaplin: Venice in a small, cold glass. The engineering is a single decision honoured absolutely: white peaches, not yellow, crushed and sieved to velvet, one part purée to two of prosecco, folded rather than stirred. The fruit’s floral delicacy is the drink, and every substitution, yellow fruit, bottled nectar, peach liqueur, produces something pleasant and wrong. It is the standard by which fruit-and-fizz drinks are judged and the reason most fail: the Bellini is not a recipe so much as an ingredient shown respect. In white peach season it is unbeatable; out of season, good frozen purée keeps it honest, exactly as Harry’s does.
Screwdriver
The Screwdriver is the simplest cocktail with a proper origin story: American engineers and oil workers in the mid-century, spiking cans of orange juice with vodka and stirring the result with the nearest tool to hand. The name was in print by 1949, Smirnoff's marketers took it up alongside the Moscow Mule, and vodka and orange became the default easy drink of the western world. Two ingredients leave nowhere to hide, which makes this a referendum on its juice. Fresh-squeezed orange turns it from a spiked carton into something genuinely worth ordering, bright and sweet-sharp and alive, and the vodka asks only to be clean and honestly measured. Fifty millilitres against a hundred and twenty is the ratio that keeps it a cocktail. It is also the trunk of a family tree. A Galliano float makes it a Harvey Wallbanger, sloe gin once made it a Slow Screw, and a good deal of the brunch canon descends from this glass.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits
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