Sharkbait’s Cocktail of the Week: Hitting The Turf

Happy Friday! I don’t know what it is recently, but in the last few days my inbox has been flooded with martini and martini spinoff recipes. Is spring officially martini drinking season? Or is this BIG MARTINI flexing it’s influence and trying to push their concoctions onto the cocktail drinking world? Whatever the reason, it worked and I have a martini variant on offer this week.

I’ve done martinis (and their twists – no pun intended) in the past before, and wanted to keep experimenting, and add more simple drinks to the repertoire. So this week I picked the Turf Club Cocktail from the Waldorf Astoria Bar Book by Frank Ciafa.

I’ve made a modified version of this from the Gentleman’s Companion (side note, I really need to go back to that book, its fantastic), but I was lacking in absinthe at the time, and the proportions are skewed more towards a traditional martini in the original, so I figured I would, nay; should make the original:

Turf Club

2 oz. gin (Plymouth or London Dry – I used Gordon’s London Dry)
.75 oz. dry vermouth
.25 oz. maraschino liqueur
2 dashes absinthe
2 dashes orange bitters
Lemon twist for garnish

Add the gin, dry vermouth, maraschino, absinthe, and bitters into a mixing glass with ice and stir until well-chilled. Strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Up front, I get a lot of maraschino liqueur on the nose. Also, I definitely get hints of lemon from the twist as well as the little squeeze of the peel that released a little bit of oils on top of the drink.

The sip is very smooth, cold and excellent. I get very pronounced gin flavors, but not alcohol intensity (if that makes sense). The juniper notes play very nicely with the maraschino liqueur. The liqueur lets the natural flavors of the dry gin through, while the gin takes away a good amount of the sweetness the maraschino and it creates a wonderfully balanced flavor palate. What I really was afraid of, was the addition of the absinthe. I haven’t exactly had the best of luck with absinthe in the past, but I think I nailed it here. The recipe called for 2 dashes, and I took that to mean 4 – 5 eye droplets of frozen absinthe and that seems to do the trick. I can pick it up later in the sip, more towards the back half and a little palate linger after I finish, but it isn’t too overpowering. Which is good since too much absinthe would absolutely ruin this drink. The vermouth gets kinda lost, but I suspect it’s purpose is more to act as a sort of filler, but that is doing it an extreme injustice. This is a twist on a dry martini and a clutch ingredient is dry vermouth, so you can’t exactly omit it without fundamentally changing the bones of this drink. I would also recommend finishing this before it starts to warm up. It’s much better super cold, like any good martini is.

I liked this a lot, it’s dry, flavorful, strong but not overpowering. I’ll definitely be making this drink again. Especially when I want to (pardon the pun) mix it up from a traditional martini.

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)