The Mimosa (or “Champagne Orange”) is a variation on the Buck’s Fizz, which was created around 1921 by barman Malachi “Pat” McGarry (1878–ca. 1941) as the signature offering at Buck’s Club, a private members’ establishment in London. Unlike its predecessor, which uses slightly more champagne than orange juice and might include gin and grenadine, the Mimosa is a simple combination of orange juice and chilled champagne, now usually mixed in equal parts. The drink was reputedly created in 1925 and attributed to Frank Meier, head bartender at the Ritz in Paris. See Ritz. The recipe does appear in Meier’s 1936 recipe book The Artistry of Mixing Drinks, along with McGarry’s Buck’s Fizz, but it is printed without the little monogram that Meier attached to recipes he claimed as his own, such as the Kolkure, Alfonso XIII, Blue Bird, and Winter Sport cocktails. (Of the five hundred drink recipes in the book, only just over forty bear the monogram.) In that context, it is worth noting that the Mimosa’s first appearance in print was in Nice barman Dominique Migliorero’s L’art du shaker, published in 1925 or before.
The drink’s simplicity struck a chord with Parisian society in the same manner as the Buck’s Fizz had a few years earlier among British lovers of this morning drink. Along with the Bloody Mary, the Mimosa has become one of the quintessential brunch drinks in America. See Bloody Mary. The recipe has been replicated around the world over the past eighty years despite the fact that only one thousand copies of Meier’s book were ever printed.
See also fizz and Meier, Frank.
Recipe (Frank Meier’s): Put the juice of half an orange in a champagne flute or small wine glass and fill with chilled champagne.
Meier, Frank. The Artistry of Mixing Drinks. Paris: Frayam, 1936, 76.
Migliorero, Dominique. L’art du shaker. Nice: n.d., ca. 1925.
By: Anistatia R. Miller and Jared M. Brown