Impress your friends with simple yet effective Fresh Fruit Fizz Cocktails!

If you are like myself, involved in the wine industry, then you tend to get your fair share of family and friends popping over to visit and most certainly are given the nudge to host those special events such as Christmas, Halloween, Easter and it’s funny how many people come round to hand deliver a card on your birthday! Wine professionals are very likely to have a decent wine collection and active ones will most likely have many recent samples to taste and review – Friends and family pick this up fast you know!

Anyway, what I wanted to quickly look at in this piece is how to impress those guests with something different other than simply popping open a bottle, decanting and pouring into your best Riedel glasses.

The focus at our office and home is fizz so it is all very much refreshing, crisp and chilled flavours on offer. Not that we need to make our tasting even more appealing, sometimes it is good to offer guests a new concept and idea in how to present sparkling wines here we went for some simple yet highly effective hallowed out fruits to serve the wines in.

These are great obviously for an array of cocktails though of course, fizzy ones make them that bit sexier, ideal for the beach, poolside and Summer garden parties (even convenient pool setups like these), they not only look great, but add to the fresh fruit flavours.

Preparation is simple and very cost effective in that you require only the fresh fruit themselves, we suggest starting with pineapple and mango and of course a sharp knife to cut them with and a spoon (or ice cream scoop as we used), some ice, straws / umbrellas if you are after that ‘Del Boy cocktail look‘ and of course some chilled fizz (carton of mango juice as an extra if needed):

Pineapple ‘Villa Marcello’ Cocktail (Villa Marcello DOC Millesimato Brut)

For this, all you will need is a bottle of the Villa Marcello DOC Millesimato Brut, some ice, mango juice and a fresh pineapple. Preparation is all about the pineapple to be honest, slice the top off neatly and carefully use a knife to cut around the edge and down so to make it easier to scoop out chunks on the pineapple (I tried to keep the centre part of the pineapple fruit away from the outside as it is not as nice). Once you have all the inside taken out you will need to very thinly slice the nicer parts of the pineapple in to very small cubes (note that if using a straw then cubes need to be small enough to travel up it and not block it) and then add some to the new pineapple cup you have made. From there add three cubes of ice, pour in halfway the mango juice then pop open the bubbly and fill the rest of the cup with it. Garnish with a straw or two and maybe even one of those fancy umbrellas!

Mango “Il Fresco” Cocktail (Villa Sandi Spumante DOC)

All you need to achieve this neat little cocktail number is a bottle of the Villa Sandi Il Fresco, a mango, some mango juice and some ice. Cut the top away from the mango leaving the tip of the large seed showing. This will take you some careful time scooping away, though neatly remove the seed and discard it and remove the mango fruit and place it to one side. Once you have neatly taken out the inside you will need to very thinly dice the mango fruit and place some back into the new mango cup you have made. From there you add some ice, some mango juice just up to below halfway then it is popping open the Villa Sandi that remains and filling up you mango cup!