Moët & Chandon's Best Suggestions For 3-Ingredient Mother's Day Brunch Drinks

If there is anything certain about Mother's Day, it is that the matriarch of the house deserves a slow start and someone else preparing the morning meal. Moms work hard every day, and the least you can do is make sure that this one day of the year they get to sleep in and relax. Given the expectation of something of a lie-in, brunch is typically the Mother's Day meal of choice — and when breakfast turns to brunch, there is an invitation to bring cocktails to the table. For advice on which drinks would be best to treat mom this year, we turned to Brian Stewart, manager of trade advocacy and mixologist for Moët Hennessy.

The cocktails Stewart suggests are each a perfect combination of elegance and simplicity. Built around four different types of champagne — each bottle coming from one of Moët Hennessy's Maisons and boasting a unique character — there is plenty of room to tailor the cocktails to not only the tastes of the day's guest of honor, but also the rest of the Mother's Day brunch menu. With just two or three additional carefully chosen additions each, Stewart provides us with recipes that are refined yet uncomplicated, a perfect combination for a day when the meal is important, but not nearly as important as the time spent together. Add one or two of these drinks to your brunch menu, and you're all but guaranteed a lovely meal and a grateful mother.

The first cocktail on this list is a clever play on what is certainly the most iconic brunch cocktail, the mimosa. The trick with the Golden Mimosa is starting with the "clean, citrus-driven backbone" of Moët & Chandon Rosé Impérial champagne, then adding just enough orange juice and apricot liqueur to layer in sweetness and aroma without overpowering the wine. "A refined upgrade to the classic mimosa," Stewart says of the drink, "still familiar, but with added depth and a touch of indulgence."

To make this cocktail, start with a standard pour of champagne — 4 to 5 ounces is a typical sparkling wine pour — in a flute or coupe glass. To that, you want to add just a splash of each orange juice and apricot liqueur, around a ¼ ounce a piece. With a bottle of champagne as nice as this, you don't want to overdo it. "A small amount of apricot goes a long way," Stewart adds.

When it comes to choosing the best orange juice, it is always a good idea to select a pulp-free option for mimosas. There's simply no need for extra texture.

Next up on this list of three-ingredient champagne cocktails, we have a drink whose name alone ought to land it on any Mother's Day brunch menu: The Flower Spritz. "Light, floral, and elegant," Stewart explains, "[it] feels like spring in a glass and pairs beautifully with brunch or garden settings."

This cocktail starts with Moët & Chandon Rosé Impérial — a highly ranked bottle of sparkling rose — and takes on its fruity, floral character from the addition of lemon juice and elderflower liqueur. For those unfamiliar, elderflower liqueur is made from the flower of the elder plant — the same place elderberries come from — and has a beautiful, delicate aroma to it. St-Germain is likely the most well-known brand, but there are plenty of other good elderflower liqueurs out there as well.

Just as with the previous cocktail, start with a pour of the champagne and then finish the drink with around a ¼ ounce of fresh lemon juice and only ½ ounce of elderflower liqueur to "avoid overpowering the champagne." The aromas of elderflower may be on the delicate side, but you still want to make sure that it is enhancing "the floral and red fruit notes" of the champagne, not erasing them.

Next up is the Berry Royale, a simple twist on the classic Kir Royale. The key to making the best champagne cocktails is finding just the right balance of flavors to imbue the wine with a touch of sweetness, a hint of flavor, and a whiff of aroma without dampening its own virtues. In this simple combination of Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label, fresh strawberries, and crème de cassis (black currant liqueur), the effect is achieved to perfection.

"This is the 'celebration' cocktail of these recipes," Stewart reveals, deeming it "festive, slightly indulgent, and visually beautiful." It is visually stunning thanks to both the beautiful color that the creme de cassis lends the drink and the marvelous way that sparkling wine floats berries in the glass. The crème de cassis adds layers of dark berries and the strawberries deliver those red fruit notes; these are the ideal flavors to complement the Veuve Clicquot. As Stewart explains, "Pinot Noir is the signature grape in Veuve Clicquot," which allows the wine to pair just perfectly with these berry flavors.

This drink is a very simple one to put together. All you need is a standard pour of the Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label, around a ¼ ounce of crème de cassis, and three slices of strawberry per glass — slicing helps release the strawberry aroma. Again, you'll want to make sure that you don't overdo the liqueur, but aside from that, this drink is fairly foolproof.

If sleeping in and eating brunch are the quintessential Mother's Day activities for mom, this final drink may soon be the quintessential cocktail. Moms love chardonnay, that's basically a known fact. So, what could be better than adding a deep elegance by using dozens of Old World chardonnay crus to craft an exquisite champagne? Well, turning that champagne into its own unique take on the classic French 75 cocktail, of course.

This cocktail is "a softer, more rounded take on a French 75," Stewart explains. "It's elegant, slightly richer, and perfect for a celebratory toast." (Mom probably wouldn't mind hearing a few kind words while sipping at this glass.) For this cocktail, the first step is not to pour the champagne. This one is slightly more complicated than the others — but only just.

First, make yourself a bit of honey simple syrup by combining equal parts honey and warm water and stirring until dissolved. Then, shake a ½ ounce Hennessy V.S.O.P Cognac with a ¼ ounce of the honey syrup and a ½ ounce of fresh lemon juice per drink. Once that's all mixed, combine it with a pour of the Ruinart Blanc de Blancs — the chardonnay grape champagne in question — and serve. As Stewart notes, "Runiart Blanc de Blancs balances the richness of honey with crisp acidity turning any Chard-loving mom into the Champagne Queen she deserves to be."