Overview

This is one of my many Champagne cocktails from Clover Club.  It's a simple French 75 variation (aren’t they all?) that uses muddled lemon wedges in place of juice, which provides added brightness from the lemon rind - same as in a Bourbon Smash.  It meshes with the bubbles like a dream. FYI, I usually cut lemon into sixths - so in half, then each half into thirds.

 

The combination of raspberries and blackberries is key, which surprised me.  I thought it just sounded good on paper, but when I’ve tried to fudge the drink by using just one and not the other it hasn’t worked nearly as well.  The raspberries supply ripe fruit flavors, while the blackberries lend a backbone of dark fruit. Both are needed to round the drink out.  

 

At Clover, we use vanilla syrup for the sweetener and Ransom Old Tom gin for the gin.  If you have those, awesome, but plain simple syrup and a classic dry gin work just fine - brilliantly, in fact. The baking spice bitters I use are Jerry Thomas Decanter Bitters.  The drink will still be tasty without them, but not quite as interesting.  As for the name? It’s a Jurassic Park reference, of course.