Let’s Get Blitzen: Cocktail Advent Calendar – Day 15 – Placebo Perlini. The bellini is up there with the mimosa when it comes to Sunday morning sips. The perlini replaces peach purée with in-season pears and swaps Champagne for a zero-proof sparkling.
A two-ingredient, alcohol-free cocktail probably comes as a welcome respite after a busy month of imbibing.
You’ll need to work with a very ripe pear for the puree, I found it was easiest to achieve the desired texture with the help of an immersion blender. There’s nothing worse than breaking out the food processor or Vitamix only to realize you don’t have enough volume to blend and the blades just spin uselessly above your ingredients.
By contrast, you’ll need a less ripe pear for your garnish. A successful pear fan calls for a slightly underripe piece of fruit that still has some structural integrity. Otherwise, you’ll be fighting with your slices of pear to get them to stand up right or end up slicing clean through them with your cocktail pick.
With the rise of of the low- and no-alcohol movement, we increasingly have access to a wider variety of non-alcoholic wines, beers, and spirits. There are a variety of non-alcoholic sparkling wines that I’d recommend including: Alt. Sparkling Non-Alcoholic Chardonnay, Silver Swallow Luxury Kombucha, or Oddbird Blanc de Blancs.
Be sure to tune into my Instagram Stories tonight at 5 p.m. Eastern for a step-by-step cocktail tutorial on how to make this zero-proof perlini.
Cheers, friends!
Placebo Perlini
- 1½ oz pear purée
- 4 oz non-alcoholic sparkling wine
- Garnish: pear fan
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Chop a very ripe pear into large chunks. Blend into a purée using an immersion blender.
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Add 1½ oz of pear purée to a champagne flute. Slowly pour in non-alcoholic sparkling wine.
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Garnish with a pear fan skewered on a cocktail pick.
