Last weekend, our friends hosted a Speakeasy party, and we were tapped to provide the drinks. For those of you that don’t know (most of you, I assume), Speakeasy is a party game where you lie to each other (always fun) and try to figure things out about the other team without knowing who’s actually on which team, and obviously lends itself very well to having 1920’s theme decor and comestibles.
Since I didn’t want to be stuck behind the bar the whole time, I opted for two batched drinks, attempting to satisfy both those guests who wanted a lighter, fruitier drink and those who wanted something a little more spirit-forward. Both of these ended up rather on the first end of that spectrum, but I was okay with that. This one, the French .45 (like the gun) represented “The Feds” in the game, and is apparently the more original recipe for a French 75 (usually with gin). The second drink, the Al Capone, was obviously for “The Mob” and, well, you’ll just have to take a look at that post to find out.
Some not so great news coming out of the French town of Grasse yesterday, when a teenager committed a school shooting, which is rather uncommon outside of the US. The silver lining is that no injuries were considered life threatening.
The French .75
(adapted from this Food Republic article. Amounts are per cocktail, though we made enough for 25.)
- 1 oz. brandy
- .25 oz lemon juice [we used bottled due to the volume, but fresh is always better]
- .25 oz simple syrup
- 4 ounces Champagne [for price reasons, used Cava but who’s counting]
- Shake Cognac, lemon and simple syrup with ice and strain into a chilled champagne flute glass.
- Top slowly with 3 to 4 ounces of Champagne and garnish with a lemon twist.
Tasting Notes
BN: Honestly, to me, this mostly just tasted like lemony champagne, which was not bad, just not super interesting to me. Might be good with a bit of extra citrus, some blood orange or grapefruit as well?
PiC: I can taste the brandy! Overall, it’s sort of like more alcoholic champagne. But I can’t hate on that. [Also, check out her signage in the above picture!]
The Crowd: Well, we went through three bottles of champagne with this [BN: we had people make their own with a pitcher of the first three ingredients, mixed, and a bottle of champagne], so apparently we loved it.
The Boozy Newsie 
The only time I ever consumer a French .75 was at your uncle’s (first) bachelor party at the bar of the Plaza Hotel in NYC. As I remember, I found it very enjoyable, but I may have been influenced by the fact that, at 17, I was not carded. (Not all that much of an achievement–the drinking age in New York then was 18.)
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