Black Velvet: taste test of the Bismarck Cocktail

“Black Velvet” was mentioned in Massie’s Dreadnought as the the name of the “concoction” Otto von Bismarck favored in his younger days as a minor diplomat, before his geopolitical triumphs: the smacking down of Denmark in the Schleswig-Holstein affair; showing Austria just who called the shots in the Germanosphere; and treating the French like the soft cheese they had become in the Franco-Prussian War, not to mention unifying the German states into a Prussia-dominated nation.

Black Velvet was a mixture of stout and champagne, but the passage that mentions it has no other details, whether on proportions or which went in the glass first. So we were on our own. We used Guinness and Freixenet, a low-end Spanish champagne-like variety that’s a coupla bucks closer to real champagne than Great Western, and also keeps the whole affair European.

A pint glass was used and the base experimental starting ratio was three parts stout to one part champagne. Poured the stout in first and then slowly topped with the bubbly. Immediately it frizzed the perfect Guinness head over the top. A quick sip to prevent too much overflow was all champagne. Once it settled we stirred it gently with the handle of a wooden spoon and then had a first real taste.

The strong character of the stout was completely neutralized. The sensation was a mixture of hard and smooth. The stout provided the body that champagne can never have, and the champagne added a shimmering gloss that had, however, lost all fruitiness.

Second glass was more stout and just a topping off with a dash of champagne. Same effect. Apparently no matter how much you add, the dark nutty taste of the stout goes away, and what you’re left with is a full-bodied Teutonic non-fruity champagne. If the Germans had invented champagne, this is what it would be like. Makes a kind of sense.

Some notes on Bismarck: Not an intellectual by any stretch he was rewarded with vast estates for his victories; in one of the houses he filled the basement with all the books given him over the years, none of which he ever read.

Later in life, though he had few friends, he kept his fondness for food and drink. “On the rare occasions when Bismarck entertained, guests were astonished by the lavish table spread by the Princess and the courtesy and warmth exhibited by the Prince. Visitors arriving at ten p.m. would find awaiting them Brunswick sausages, Westphalian ham, Elbe eels, sardines, anchovies, caviar (usually a gift from St. Petersburg), salmon, hard-boiled eggs, cheeses and bottles of dark Bavarian beer. Bismarck appeared at eleven.”

He also suffered from insomnia. “At night he slept poorly or not at all. Often he lay awake until seven a.m., then slept until 2 p.m. Lying in bed, he mulled over his grievances. ‘I have spent the whole night hating.’ he said once. When no immediate object of hatred was available he ransacked his memory to dredge up wrongs done to him years before.”"

When his work redrawng the map of Europe was done, Bismarck had no dreams of world domination. “The years after 1887 seemed anticlimactic. The moments of daring calculation, of dramatic victories snatched from probable catastrophe, were over. ‘I am bored,’ Bismarck said in 1874. ‘The great things are done.’”

At one point he confessed to what might be diagnosed today as multiple personality disorder. “Faust complains of having two souls in his breast. I have a whole squabbling crowd. It goes on as in a republic.”

Source: Dreadnought, Robert K. Massie