National Mimosa Day falls on May 16 each year. It celebrates a signature brunch cocktail that is easy to make and immensely popular in many countries of the world, consisting of equal parts chilled orange juice and champagne (or another sparkling wine) served in a champagne flute. The day gets its name from the mimosa, a yellow flowering plant whose color the drink resembles.
The observance was created by Jace Shoemaker-Galloway, a freelance writer and self-styled Queen of Holidays. She earned the nickname after writing thousands of articles about holidays over the years and eventually deciding to invent a few of her own, of which National Mimosa Day is among the best known. Most sources place its founding in the early 2000s.
Mimosas have been enjoyed since they were created at the Ritz Hotel in Paris in 1925 by head bartender Frank Meier, who included the recipe in his 1936 book The Artistry of Mixing Drinks. A close cousin, Buck’s Fizz (two parts champagne to one part orange juice) had been served at London’s Buck’s Club a few years earlier in 1921, and some historians treat the mimosa as a refined French descendant of that drink rather than a fully independent invention.
On this day restaurants run bottomless-mimosa specials, bars promote variations with grapefruit, peach, or pomegranate juice, and the #NationalMimosaDay hashtag does much of the heavy lifting in spreading the observance from year to year.
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Fire up the grill — a mimosa in one hand, tongs in the other.
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