Clover Club

William Butler Yeats

5 raspberries, plus more for garnish

½ oz. simple syrup

1½ oz. London dry gin

½ oz. dry vermouth

½ oz. fresh lemon juice

½ oz. egg white

Place the raspberries and syrup in a cocktail shaker and muddle.

Add the remaining ingredients and dry shake for 20 seconds. Add ice and shake until chilled.

Strain into a coupe, skewer a few raspberries on a toothpick, garnish the cocktail with them, and enjoy.

Yeats seems an unlikely candidate for choosing a rather frivolous cocktail as one of his favorite drinks, but according to one story, it’s absolutely true. The Clover Club cocktail was created at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel bar in Philadelphia, and meant as something of a joke: made to be consumed by “serious gentlemen” who met once a month to let their proverbial hair down and mock one another in good fun.

When Yeats tried one at a lunch in his honor, he was at first suspicious, of course, but according to a journalist at the event: “Yeats tasted the cocktail, and smacked his lips. Another taste. His eye gleamed and his face lighted up. But, to the surprise of his hosts, he declined to gulp. This thing must be taken slowly. It was filled with a variety of flavors, and it must be tasted all the way down to the bottom of the glass. So he just sat and sipped that Clover Club Cocktail. When wine was brought and proffered him, he waved it away. ‘Another of the same,’ he said, in effect, and he kept sipping Clover Club Cocktails all the way through the meal.”