The Black Velvet starts with a stout beer, or in other words, a Guinness. (Courtesy photo)

I was at a little dinner party recently for someone who ambivalent about marking yet another birthday past 50. “It’s champagne or tears at a time like this!” one of the guests with a talent for bon mots rasped.

Champagne and mourning don’t seem to go together; in fact Salvador Dali called champagne and other sparklers the wines of frivolity in his book The Wines of Gala, which is artistic, trippy, insightful and sadly out of print. Yet those two sentiments do share a glass in the unique cocktail known as the Black Velvet.

The Black Velvet, a mix of  bittersweet chocolate-hued Guinness stout and golden champagne is a drink that’s on the menu of most Irish and English pubs, but it doesn’t seem to get much play outside of these outposts of British and Irish culture. But it’s a peculiarly pleasing drink that has a interesting tale attached to it.  And as St. Patrick’s Day approaches, you’ll be wantin’ an alternative to green beer and Irish Car Bombs.

Prince Albert was Queen Victoria's husband, chief advisor and friend. (Courtesy photo)

Queen Victoria married her handsome second cousin Albert in a ceremony that has set the mold for a story-book wedding. According to an account on Love Tripper.com she wore an unfashionable white dress, a blue sapphire and a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair when they married on Feb. 10, 1840. Rather than being trapped in a dutiful royal marriage, Victoria and Albert were friends who shared a passionate romance and a professional relationship, along with nine children. Ten years after their wedding, Victoria wrote in her diary: “Often I feel surprised at being so loved, and tremble at my great happiness.”

So she was devastated, as were her subjects, when Albert died suddenly in 1861 at age 42. Laughter was forbidden in their home Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, Queen Victoria refused to go out in public for a decade and she wore black for the rest of her life. In this context, it makes sense that someone who ordered champagne would still want to seem like they were mourning, just a little. A sentimental or patriotic bartender at Brook’s Club on St. James Street – a private men’s club in London founded in 1778 that still exists – is credited with mixing some Guinness with champagne.

This feature on Esquire.com explains the intricate steps involved with pouring a perfect Black Velvet (fill a Collins glass halfway with Guinness, top with champagne and stir.) Other methods, like this one described on The Greasy Spoon ,have you float the champagne over the back of a spoon, so you end of with a bi-colored drink. Either way, since you’ve probably mastered pouring by now, skip right down to David Wondrich’s historical dramatization of the moment when this drink was created back in 1861.

The Black Velvet is also known as a Bismark because German chancellor named Otto von Bismark supposedly loved the combination. If you’re on a bit of budget, there’s no shame in skipping the champagne and mixing your Guinness with hard apple or pear cider to make a Poor Man’s Black Velvet. It’s the thought that counts.
Original Black Velvet Drink