Gin and lemon meet a sugar's worth of sweetness, then Champagne lengthens the mix — a bright citrus sour given lift and sparkle in a chilled flute. The gin's botanicals stay crisp under the lemon's snap, while fine bubbles carry the aroma upward and leave a dry, light finish that hides more strength than it lets on.
shaken · Champagne flute · Up
add
Add the gin, lemon juice, and simple syrup to a shaker with ice.
shake
Shake well until chilled.
strain
Strain into a chilled Champagne flute.
top
Top up with chilled Champagne.
stir
Stir gently to combine.
No single inventor can claim the French 75; the drink took shape across several cocktail books of the 1920s. In Paris, Harry MacElhone set down an early version with a different build in his ABC of Mixing Cocktails of 1922, invoking the French 75mm field gun whose shelling the drink's kick was said to match, and Robert Vermeire credited him that same year. The familiar gin-and-Champagne recipe settled into place in Judge Jr.'s Here's How in 1927, and Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book spread it far and wide in 1930. Today the IBA counts it among its Contemporary Classics, and cognac versions circulate alongside the gin original.