French 75

The Origin

Harry's New York Bar on the Rue Daunou in Paris was one of the most significant cocktail bars of the early twentieth century, a gathering point for American expatriates, servicemen, and the kind of international travellers who moved between the two sides of the Atlantic during the years when European cocktail culture was being shaped by American influence as much as by its own traditions. The bar was opened by Tod Sloan in 1911 and acquired by Harry MacElhone in 1923, but it was already producing significant drinks before MacElhone's ownership, and the French 75 is documented there from 1915.

The name referred to the Canon de 75 modèle 1897, the French army's standard field artillery piece during the First World War, a weapon celebrated for its accuracy, rate of fire, and the force of its impact. Naming a drink after it in 1915, in the middle of the war that was consuming the country in which the bar operated, was a gesture with a specific cultural context. The drink's combination of gin and Champagne, French and British in a single glass, carried its own wartime symbolism for a bar catering to Allied servicemen and expatriates in equal measure.

Gin Versus Cognac

The debate about whether the French 75 should use gin or cognac is one of the more genuinely interesting historical disputes in the cocktail canon because both versions have documentary support and both produce drinks of genuine quality. The gin version appears in Harry MacElhone's own writing and is the version most consistently cited in the historical literature as the original. The cognac version appeared in other bar guides of the same era and has been championed by New Orleans bartending culture, where the French 75 Bar at Arnaud's Restaurant has served the cognac version as its canonical build for decades.

The gin version is more tart, more botanical, and more immediately bracing in the way the weapon it is named after is bracing. The cognac version is rounder, more fruit-forward, and more indulgent in a way that suits a long, celebratory evening better than the gin version's more assertive character. Understanding both is worth the effort of making both. The gin version is the starting point.

The Champagne Choice

The Champagne in a French 75 is not a background ingredient. At 60ml in a total build of approximately 140ml, it represents nearly half the drink's volume and defines its character as much as the gin sour base does. A dry, well-structured brut Champagne with genuine effervescence produces a French 75 that is bright, complex, and genuinely celebratory. A sweet sparkling wine pushes the drink toward cloying territory that the gin's juniper and the lemon's acid cannot fully correct.

Brut Champagne, with its low residual sugar and high acidity, is the correct choice and the one that produces the most coherent result with the gin sour base. A quality Champagne is not required, and quality dry sparkling wines from Crémant producers in France or Cava from Spain perform well in this format at considerably lower cost. What is required is that the wine be genuinely dry rather than off-dry or sweet, genuinely well-chilled before pouring, and added with enough care to preserve its carbonation into the first sip.

The Build Sequence

The French 75 is unusual among Champagne cocktails in shaking its gin sour base before the Champagne is added. This two-stage build is not conventional in most sparkling wine cocktails, where all ingredients are combined directly in the glass, but it is essential to the French 75's character. Shaking the gin, lemon, and sugar together with ice produces a properly diluted, well-chilled sour base that integrates completely before the Champagne arrives. The Champagne is then added to a finished, balanced sour rather than to a combination of unintegrated ingredients, and its effervescence lifts and extends the sour rather than being asked to do the integration work that the shake has already performed.

The practical consequence is a drink with a more coherent, better-integrated character than the same ingredients combined directly in the glass. It requires one more piece of equipment and one more step. The result justifies both.

How to Serve It

Shaken, double strained into a chilled flute or coupe, topped carefully with well-chilled Champagne, and finished with expressed lemon peel over the surface. Serve immediately and serve it cold. The French 75 is a celebratory drink in character and context, suited to occasions that call for something with genuine spirit alongside the Champagne rather than simply sparkling wine in a long glass. It is also, as its name suggests, stronger than it appears. The gin measure is generous and the Champagne's alcohol adds to a total ABV that the drink's elegant presentation does not advertise. Serve it with that knowledge and give the drinker the context to appreciate what is in the glass.