Turf Club

Gin, dry vermouth, maraschino, and bitters with a dash of absinthe — a Gilded Age horse racing club classic documented from 1882 to The Savoy Cocktail Book of 1930.

The Turf Club cocktail emerged from the exclusive sporting culture of 19th-century Anglo-American horse racing society, where turf clubs were the social organizations that governed Thoroughbred racing and defined elite leisure. The Jockey Club, founded in Newmarket in 1750, was the oldest and most influential, but turf clubs spread across Britain and the United States throughout the 19th century as horse racing became the prestige sport of the wealthy. These establishments maintained their own bars, and the Turf Club cocktail — a stirred gin drink combining the spirit with dry vermouth, maraschino liqueur, orange bitters, and a dash of absinthe — was the kind of refined aperitif suited to a well-dressed man in a members' drawing room before the afternoon races. Harry Johnson included a version in his Bartender's Manual, which went through multiple editions from 1882 onward, making the Turf Club one of the better-documented drinks of the American Gilded Age bar tradition. Harry Craddock subsequently included it in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, where it joined the small group of pre-Prohibition American cocktails that Craddock preserved for a London clientele. The absinthe accent, a hallmark of the most sophisticated late-19th century stirred drinks, distinguishes the Turf Club from simpler gin-vermouth combinations and places it firmly in the tradition that also produced the Martinez, the Tuxedo, and their many variants.