Stork Cocktail

The signature drink of New York's legendary Stork Club, blending gin with Cointreau and orange juice.

The Stork Club Cocktail is associated with the Stork Club on East 53rd Street in New York City, one of the most celebrated nightclubs and restaurants of the mid-20th century. The Stork Club was opened in 1929 by Sherman Billingsley, who was born in Enid, Oklahoma in 1900 and had been involved in bootlegging operations before Prohibition's end, becoming wealthy enough to establish the club that would define New York café society for three decades. After an initial closure, the club reopened in 1934 at its permanent 3 East 53rd Street location and became the gathering place for Hollywood stars, politicians, athletes, and society figures from the 1930s through the 1960s. Walter Winchell — the nationally syndicated gossip columnist who broadcast to tens of millions of Americans on his radio program — used a corner table at the Stork Club as his operational base for years, his presence making the establishment a fixture in American popular culture. The club's cocktail — gin with fresh lime juice and Cointreau — appeared in the bartending literature of the era as a citrus-forward gin drink suited to the sophisticated, high-energy social environment that Billingsley cultivated. The Stork Club closed in 1965 and was subsequently demolished; the site is now a public park.