French 76

An elegant champagne cocktail swapping vodka for the gin in a French 75. Bubbly, citrusy, and celebratory.

The French 76 is a vodka variation on the French 75 — the gin-and-champagne cocktail whose documented history traces to World War I France and whose name references the Canon de 75 modèle 1897, the revolutionary French field artillery gun whose hydraulic recoil mechanism and high rate of fire made it the most effective light artillery piece of its era. The French 75 — gin or cognac, fresh lemon juice, sugar, and champagne — appeared in print in multiple cocktail guides through the 1920s and 1930s. The substitution of vodka for gin produces the French 76 — a name that simply increments the French 75's number to signal the spirit substitution — creating a version whose neutral spirit allows the champagne's yeast-driven complexity and the lemon's citric brightness to dominate without gin's botanical interference. The vodka version became commercially popular through the 1990s and 2000s as vodka's American market dominance — it became the best-selling spirit category in the United States through the mid-20th century — created demand for vodka substitutions in established classic cocktail formats.