The French 75

Well hello and good Friday there, folks. We got a fun drink today, I'm super excited, and I want to thank my friend Kristi Larson for the idea. I probably would have not thought of this, but it's, it's an amazing drink. In fact, I like this, I've only been making this drink for maybe two weeks, maybe a week and a half. I like it so much that I decided to make an entire drink making exercise out of it. Super easy to make, super yummy, it's great, it's light, it's a perfect summer drink, and it's all because of

Kristi Larson. So thank you, Kristi Larson, for the suggestion. I know, Lori, you want me to make a sidecar really bad, and we'll probably get there, but this drink was awesome. And so one of the themes for this week, I think, is Casablanca, and I'll tell you just in a little bit, but Casablanca is one of my favorite movies of all time. Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Star Wars, Caddyshack, I know this seemed kind of disjointed, but those are probably like my favorite movies ever. In fact, Casablanca is hanging in my man room, it's one of movie posters that I really love it. I think it's a classic, I love those, those classic films, and today's drink, the French 75, actually gets its origins from that film, from Casablanca.

In fact, the French 75 is probably one of the best known movie drinks of all time. Number one would be the Vesper, by a long shot, the Vesper Martini, the Bond martini, but this has to rank in the top five of all time movie drinks, and it became famous in Casablanca, right? So if you guys have Casablanca fans, you may not remember the drink particularly, but you'll remember the scene, mean, when Yvonne goes with her Nazi suitor into Rick's and bellies up to the bar, and he orders, you know, the Nazi bastard orders a French 75, right, and then it's just kind of left the imagination what a French 75 is, but we're going to make one today.

Like I said, good drink. And of course after that, Yvonne elicits from Rick, I think, one of the most famous lines in American cinema, which is, and you guys can repeat it with me, of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she had to walk into mine. Actually, I think it's, she that she had to walk into, she had to walk into this one. I think if she had to walk into money, a lot of folks who would probably say play it again, Sam's the most famous line from that movie, or this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship at the end, but I

think that line is just classic, and I just love Casablanca, and I love this trick. Interesting, though, there is some question as to who invented the drink, but the one that I like, the legend that I like on who invented the drink is actually, comes from World War One, and there was a World War One flying ace, his name was Raul Loughborough, and Raul was a franco-american pilot. He flew most of

his missions for the French Air Force, and then flew half of his missions, or the kind of the later part of his career, flew for the US Army Air Service before there was an actual Air Force. Dude was a total badass, he was an ace for sure, he had 17 confirmed kills, 16 with the French Air Force, one with the US Air Force, and four unconfirmed kills with US Air Force. He ended up actually dying in action in 1918, in World War One, flying for the US Air Force, which obviously is a tragedy, but it's a great story, because the story goes is that Raul was having champagne, and he

was so disgusted with the champagne, he's like, ah, this stuff's for girls, right, I need a little bit more kick in this, right, so he invented this drink which combines champagne and gin. So that's the story that I like about how it was invented, it was invented by a World War One flying ace, whose name was not Snoopy but instead was Raul. Left very great story. Another interesting story about

Casablanca and the French 75, and, holla, started, you know, Rick's Cafe, of course, is famous. And Casablanca, unfortunately, it would have been totally decimated and destroyed at the beginning of World War Two. In 1942, Eisenhower had a joint operation with the British forces, North Africa, actually started in Casablanca, and Eisenhower bombed the hell out of it, and so if Rick's would have actually been, you know, there, it would have totally got destroyed at the beginning of World War Two, which is a shame, but also kind of poetic if you loved the film. So enough about kind of the history

and the film and stuff, obviously loved the film, and it's funny, I actually went back into the film and watch it again to pick up where they, you know, talked about the French 75, what was actually ordered, because that's such a dork about the whole thing. The cool thing about this, super light, super great summer drink, I think you're going to really enjoy the, super easy to make, really easy to make. Ingredients are super lean, right? We've got some gin, we've got some champagne, we've got some French lemon juice, and we've got a good friend, simple syrup.

You know, the funny thing about these is you probably drink more than two of these bad boys, and you might be kicking down the door, your wife, Ingrid Bergman, with these bad boys, because they pack a punch. So let's get to it. French 75, first thing we need is our buddy the shaker. Okay, we're gonna have, like with all I thinks, repeat after me, every drink we make has at least two ounces of booze. We're gonna start right away with gin, so I'm using, I'm using Beefeater's London Dry. I've tried this with my house gin, with Hadley and Sons, it was really good.

Just use your favorite gin. I think that like in a lot of cases we talk about the botanicals of the gin, how I would mix with stuff, the champagne kind of overrides some of that, so this is a drink you could probably get away with using not as good with gin, and it would taste just dandy, but get your favourite gin. So I'm going to pour out two ounces of gin into my shaker, two ounces of gin, I'm gonna use, not so, I think it's important note, there are a ton of recipes out there for the French 75, tons of them, but they all sit around those four ingredients, gin, sugar, lemon, champagne. This particular recipe is one that I kind of twisted a little bit. I looked at a bunch of different recipes, they all have the same four things, and so I made three or four of them, define the one I like the best, or find kind of the mix between those four that I like the best, and this is it.

So two ounces of gin, we're going to use three quarters of an ounce of simple syrup. You know, you'll find a lot of recipes out there will call for sugar, just using straight sugar in here. You know, I'm just not a big proponent of using sugar in my drinks because it doesn't mix well in a store, like a lot of people rail about my old fashions because they like the sugar cube. I'm sorry, it just doesn't mix as well, and it doesn't taste as good, so simple syrup all the way. Two ounces of gin, three quarters of an ounce of simple syrup, we're going to use three quarters of an ounce of fresh lemon juice.

Okay, got all that in our shaker, and add Some ice, okay, no, we're gonna shake the last year.

Traditionally you serve using a champagne flute, mmm, you know, do what you want to do there. Okay, so it's got a drink, we're pouring it onto my glass, the last thing we add to it is the champagne. Now for obvious reasons, you do not mix the champagne, you do not mix the champagne with the booze in the mixer, but I'm gonna use two ounces of champagne.

Okay, I'm gonna pour that, it's awfully bubbly, so you kinda have to wait for it to die down a little bit. I'm gonna pour that right in there, into that drink. Okay, some people, I've seen recipes where they fill the top full of champagne. I don't mind, a big champagne fan, I'm something, not a big fan of that. I've seen recipes Where the gin, champagne ratios, like 1 2, 3, which I think is ridiculous. More gin is always a good thing in the drink, but that's it, here's our French 75, right? So we've got two ounces of gin, three quarters of an ounce of simple syrup, three quarters of an ounce of fresh lemon juice, shaken, poured out into probably a champagne flute or something like that. I'm just using the regular kind of a poor man's martini glass, and I add another 2 ounces of champagne on top

of that. Usually you'd use a lemon slice, I like to do these little peels. It's super easy to do if you have like a zester. Most of us just have a little zesty part, find a zester, you can get these in any bar store that have this little kind of notch there, okay. It's super easy, all I have to do is kind of scrape along the fruit and they'll pull the rind right off, in a nice beautiful strip, like I just showed you, see your strip right there. Let's taste this bad boy. Mmm, that is a lovely drink, oh my

goodness, it's light, it's just sweet enough, you can taste the gin, you can taste the champagne, I don't think I would put any more champagne, I don't think I would put more champagne than gin, I think that's gonna ruin the drink, but you know, like I said, there's a million recipes for the French 75 out there, I think mine's the best, but that's because I like it. For things, gin, two Ounces lemon juice, 3/4 of an ounce freshly squeezed, simple syrup, 3/4 an ounce, champagne, 2 ounces, but you can kind of play with that, you know, I might

dial down the simple syrup and lemon juice, maybe a little bit, maybe between a half an ounce and 3/4 of an ounce, Depends on how you light house, what you like it. And then don't forget your garnish, either a lemon slice or lemon peel. Dude, these are awesome, man. I like those, perfect summer drink. So, French 75. Thank you, Kristi Larson, that's what got going this week. Hope you guys enjoyed it, go out and watch Casablanca, one of the top films of all time. And, you know, next week we'll think of something else, fun, maybe I'll, will make that new martini I was thinking about, but what was something fun. Next week I'll post it in the middle of the week, all the ingredient that you need.

In the meantime, have a good weekend, have a safe weekend, be safe, place, drink a lot, whatever you gotta do to get around it, but be safe. I'll talk to you next week, and in the meantime, play it again, Sam. Cheers, guys.