French 75

Gin, fresh lemon, and champagne named for the WWI French 75mm field gun — documented since 1922 and cemented by Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book.

The French 75 carries one of the most richly debated origin stories in the cocktail canon. The drink takes its name from the Canon de 75 modèle 1897, the French 75mm light field gun that was the most advanced artillery piece deployed in World War I, capable of firing up to 28 shells per minute with extraordinary accuracy. The weapon became a symbol of French military ingenuity and resilience. The first printed attribution of a cocktail to this name appears in Robert Vermeire's 1922 Cocktails: How to Mix Them, which credits the drink to Henry Tépé of Henry's Bar on Rue Volney in Paris and notes it was wildly popular in France during the war. Harry MacElhone, whose name is most often associated with the drink, included a version in his own ABC of Mixing Cocktails but never claimed to have created it — and his recipe used Calvados, gin, grenadine, and absinthe, not the champagne formula we know today. The modern composition of gin, fresh lemon juice, sugar, and champagne was first published in the small American booklet Here's How by Judge Jr. in 1927, then cemented as the standard by Harry Craddock in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, where Craddock warned that it hits with remarkable precision. The International Bartenders Association includes it as an IBA Contemporary Classic. Cognac is sometimes substituted for gin, particularly in New Orleans, producing a rounder, softer variation known in some traditions as the French 125.