Make sure your lemon juice is fresh as well (squeezed that day) and that you’ve chosen a quality gin and vermouth-I like to make this drink with Ford’s Gin and Dolin Dry. It's a drink that beautifully pairs bright berry with tangy and herbaceous vermouth.įor the Clover Club to hit both marks, it needs to be structured around a quality raspberry syrup-the best one you’ll be able to get your hands on is the one you make yourself with fresh, in-season raspberries. Other versions exist-some exclude the vermouth, others eschew raspberry for grenadine (a latter-day transformation after that syrup became something of a cocktail sensation of its own)-but the Bullock version survives today for a reason: It is a delicious cocktail with its own specific charm. By 1917 it appeared in Tom Bullock’s The Ideal Bartender in the form often served today at cocktail bars: a gin and dry vermouth sour, brightened with raspberry syrup, and frothed with egg white. It had been covered in newspapers and had begun to show up in the cocktail manuals that still survive today. Soon the drink was spread across the city, where it had, as they say, a moment.īy the time Congress voted to outlaw all alcohol in the United States on a cold January day in 1918, the drink had spread like a frothy sweet-but-not-too-sweet wildfire across the country’s collective cocktail canon. His other culinary claim to fame was popularizing Thousand Island dressing at the latter, but the Clover Club was more of an immediate success among the city’s trend-watching elite. It arrived in New York perhaps thanks to hotelier George Boldt, who operated both the Bellevue and the new Waldorf-Astoria. It was then that the famously pink drink became a cultural phenomenon beyond a small set of Philly-area lawyers and business folk. They didn't seem to think much of Women's rights in the same edition either, so not quite sure that they as an editorial team were on the right side of a few debates at the time… Thankfully, Esquire saw sense eventually (after 74 years of rumination) and posted a recipe for the drink, describing it as ‘unusual, tasty, strong, and not at all slimy.’ They were wrong at the time and the reserved nature of the praise was equally wrong too - We’ve always maintained that the Clover Club is a hugely underrated concoction.While the Clover Club cocktail may have originated in the 1890s at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia, where the social organization that lends the drinks its name would carouse, it’s very much a drink of the 20th century. Though it’s going through a well-deserved renaissance now, the Clover Club certainly took a tumble from favour in 1934 Esquire magazine named it as one of the ten worst cocktails, calling it a drink for “pansies” and relegating it to the ladies drinks section in cocktail books. Norton’s Cook-book: Selecting, Cooking, and Serving for the Home Table (1917). Lowe (where Lowe forgets to add the lemon by mistake) followed by the recipe in all its glory in Jeanette Young Norton’s Mrs. Its earliest print incarnation comes from 1909 Drinks – How to serve them by Paul E. It is unknown when and by whom the drink was originally made, but by 1910 it was being sold far outside the city of Philadelphia, in hotels like the Plaza in New York City. It was something of an old boys club, established by lawyers and bankers in the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in the 1880s. The Clover Club pre-dates Prohibition and takes its name from the Philadelphia men’s club with which it shares a name. ![]() ![]() ![]() Be warned however, the person who orders just one Clover Club is a rare beast… This is a night-time drink – one to be sipped when it’s dark and calm outside but light and loud at the bar. It’s crucial for that lovely frothy head. Our personal recommendation for the drink is to use a homemade raspberry syrup instead of grenadine – this will make it taste much fresher. Top Tips:ĭon’t despair if it’s not quite right on your first attempt. Practice makes perfect and there are far worse things to have to hone your skills at, let alone sample along the way… Booth have the citrus, juniper and spice combination to allow the full journey of the drink to reveal itself. Try the likes of Marin Miller's Westbourne strength or Plymouth Gin. The temptation to use a fruit infused gin may be high, especially as you may want to super charge the fruity nature of the drink, but the Clover Club relies on balance.
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