A Mimosa is brunch in a flute: equal parts chilled sparkling wine and freshly squeezed orange juice, poured together so the bubbles lift the juice into something light, cold and sunny yellow. It earns its keep with effervescence and citrus brightness rather than booze, the wine's dry snap keeping the orange's sweetness from turning flat or cloying.
Garnish: Orange Peel
built · Champagne Flute · Up
add
Pour chilled freshly squeezed orange juice into a champagne flute.
top
Gently top with well-chilled Champagne (or other dry sparkling wine) in equal measure.
build
Stir gently to combine; serve straight up, no ice.
garnish
Garnish with an orange twist (optional).
Nobody can say for certain who first mixed it: the drink went by "champagne orange" before taking its name from the yellow flowers of the Acacia dealbata, and it is all but the same thing as the Buck's Fizz, recorded in London in 1921. The credit often handed to Frank Meier at the Ritz Paris looks shaky, since his own 1934 book flags the drinks he invented with a special mark and leaves the mimosa unmarked; a rival tale involving Alfred Hitchcock and San Francisco has even thinner support. It caught on across the United States during the 1960s, and the IBA now lists it, noting Buck's Fizz as another name for it.