stork club

1 1/2 oz Beefeater Gin
1/2 oz Combier Triple Sec
1 oz Orange Juice
1/4 oz Lime Juice
2 dash Angostura Bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

For my second cocktail at Green Street, I asked bartender Derric Crothers for a Stork Club from their cocktail book (the next level up from the A to Z menu). The drink was created at the Manhattan nightclub of the same name sometime during its lifespan which ranged from 1929 to 1965. Yes, the club was started during Prohibition, but once you realize that the owner, Sherman Billingsley, was previously a bootlegger from Oklahoma, the whole scofflaw concept makes sense. Actually, the recipe probably dates to before 1946 when The Stork Club Bar Book was first published; I cannot confirm that the drink is actually in there for my copy has not yet arrived. Given that Prohibition was the era of gin and orange juice drinks (think: Orange Blossom and Bronx), perhaps the drink was created in the very early and underground years of the club.

After I tweeted that I was drinking a Stork Club, Lauren Clark of DrinkBoston tweeted back that the drink is a great brunch drink. I then recalled a post she wrote about it after having one at the B Side. Beside that post, my first encounter with the Stork Club was part of my harvesting bird-related drink recipes for our International Migratory Bird Day party three years ago. I do remember making one (we had 20 bird-themed drinks that made the cut) but I did not recall drinking one myself. And two Sundays ago, I figured that I should change that posthaste.
The Stork Club greeted my senses with a fresh orange aroma from the twist, juice, and liqueur. Next, the orange notes continued on in the sip and were followed by the lime, bitters, and gin botanicals on the swallow; while the sip was pleasantly sweet, the flavors in the swallow did function to dry out the balance a bit. With the gin, lime juice, orange liqueur, and Angostura Bitters, the drink did remind me of a Pegu Club; however, it was "sort of like someone tried to smooth over a Prohibition-era Pegu Club with orange juice" (quoted from my Twitter post). While I cannot confirm how this good of a brunch drink this would be, I do not see how there is a wrong time of day to drink to quaff one of these.