Pale gold sparkling wine with fine bubbles under a layer of snowy shaved ice, orange and lemon peel strips, three raspberries and a white paper straw in a plain tumbler, beside an unlabeled dark green bottle and a lemon in a small white dish. — Champagne cobbler over shaved ice in a plain tumbler, with orange and lemon peel, berries and a straw.

Champagne Cobbler, a Bottle to Four Glasses

Name: Champagne Cobbler
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 1/4 cup superfine sugar; 1/4 cup cold water; 4 strips orange peel; 4 strips lemon peel; 2 cups crushed ice; 750 ml brut champagne or other dry sparkling wine, chilled; 16 raspberries or strawberry slices

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A quarter bottle of champagne poured over shaved ice with sugar and a piece each of orange and lemon peel, dressed with berries and sipped through a straw: Jerry Thomas’s Champagne Cobbler of 1862.

By Forgotten DrinkPublished October 22, 2026

Recipe makes: 4 drinks, one 750 ml bottle
Prep: 10 min
Total: 10 min

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Champagne cobbler over shaved ice in a plain tumbler, with orange and lemon peel, berries and a straw.

The story behind the recipe

The Champagne Cobbler is champagne poured over shaved ice with sugar and a twist each of orange and lemon peel, finished with berries and drunk through a straw. What sets it apart in Jerry Thomas’s How to Mix Drinks (1862) is its arithmetic. Where his other cobblers measure wine by the wine-glass, No. 99 starts from the bottle: “One bottle of wine to four large bar glasses.”

Opened by the bottle

That suits a wine that is opened a bottle at a time and starts to go flat once the cork is out: one bottle, four glasses, nothing left standing. Thomas skips the shaking he gives the sherry version: the ice goes in a third of the way, and the wine fills “balance,” the rest of the glass.

Champagne also had the longest column on a Willard’s Hotel wine card that the New York Public Library holds among its menus: eighteen entries, from Moët & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot to an American “Longworth’s Sparkling Catawba” at the same price as Bouché Fils’ Cabinet. The Wine List at Willard’s Hotel reads that card. Thomas follows his Champagne Cobbler straight away with a Catawba Cobbler, made with “1 teaspoonful of sugar dissolved in one table-spoonful of water,” and then hock, claret and Sauterne versions made the same way.

Making it today

A modern 750 ml bottle split four ways gives just over 6 fl oz a glass, and a 12 fl oz tumbler a third full of ice holds that with room for the foam. Thomas names no style. Brut is our choice, so the tablespoon of sugar does the sweetening, and any dry sparkling wine will do. The syrup comes from the Catawba Cobbler that follows it in the book: dry sugar would need more stirring than the bubbles can stand. Because the wine is poured over the ice, not shaken with it, bagged crushed ice does the job of his shaved ice. The modern amounts are ours.

At 12% for the wine, with a little melt from the ice, each glass comes to about 10% alcohol, about one and a quarter US standard drinks.

The Sherry Cobbler, the entry before it, is shaken in its glass instead.

99. Champagne Cobbler.
(One bottle of wine to four large bar glasses.)
1 table-spoonful of sugar.
1 piece each of orange and lemon peel.
Fill the tumbler one-third full with shaved ice, and fill balance with wine, ornament in a tasty manner with berries in season. This beverage should be sipped through a straw.

Jerry ThomasHow to Mix Drinks (1862), No. 99, p. 48

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Ingredients

For 4 drinks, one 750 ml bottle. Quantities are shown as written.

Quantities as written here, for 4 drinks, one 750 ml bottle.

Superfine sugar1/4 cup
Cold water1/4 cup
Strips orange peel4
Strips lemon peel4
Crushed ice2 cups
Brut champagne or other dry sparkling wine, chilled750 ml
Raspberries or strawberry16 slices

Ingredients as written here

1/4 cup superfine sugar
1/4 cup cold water
4 strips orange peel
4 strips lemon peel
2 cups crushed ice
750 ml brut champagne or other dry sparkling wine, chilled
16 raspberries or strawberry slices

Equipment

Large tumbler and a straw
Peeler
Bar spoon

Instructions

Peel the orange peel and lemon peel in strips about 2 inches long, keeping the white pith off.
Stir the superfine sugar into the cold water until it dissolves, and divide this syrup among four large tumblers.
Put a strip each of orange and lemon peel in each glass, then fill each glass a third full with crushed ice.
Pour the brut champagne slowly down the side of each glass, a quarter of the bottle to each, letting the foam settle before topping up.
Stir each glass once, gently, with the bar spoon to lift the syrup without knocking out the bubbles.
Set the raspberries on top, add a straw and serve at once.

Nutrition

200calories per serving

Recipe makes: 4 drinks, one 750 ml bottle
Servings: 4

Estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for white table wine (for brut champagne), granulated sugar and raspberries, for one drink.

Recipe notes

When adjusting quantities

One bottle makes four glasses. Build each glass separately.

Notes

Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.

Never shake a sparkling wine in a closed shaker; the pressure can blow the lid off.

Alcohol-free version (ours): use a 750 ml bottle of chilled sparkling white grape juice in place of the champagne and leave out the sugar syrup, since the juice is already sweet; keep the peel, ice, berries and straw. A squeeze of lemon sharpens it if it tastes flat.

Catawba Cobbler (No. 100): Thomas’s next recipe takes 1 teaspoon of sugar dissolved in 1 tablespoon of water, 2 wine-glasses (4 fl oz) of Catawba wine and shaved ice, with sliced orange and berries and a straw. If you can’t find a Catawba wine, an off-dry white is our stand-in. His hock, claret and Sauterne cobblers are made the same way with those wines.

Scaling changes the ingredients only; glassware, ice and timings need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.