Salty Dog

Taste

Two ounces of vodka and four of fresh grapefruit juice, built over ice in a rocks glass with a salt rim. Grapefruit is bitter and sour at once, and the salt on the rim takes the bitter edge down so the fruit reads sweeter than it is. Cold, tart, and salty at the lip. Without the rim it is a Greyhound.

History

The Greyhound, gin and grapefruit juice, is in Harry Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book. The salt rim arrives in the 1950s and is usually credited to the entertainer George Jessel, who is said to have added it to soften the grapefruit; the drink first prints under this name in the 1962 revised edition of Ted Saucier's Bottoms Up. Gin was the original spirit and vodka took over as it took over everything else in that decade. Two ounces of vodka and four of grapefruit, over ice with a salt rim.

• Difford's Guide, Salty Dog

Same shape, other bottles

The Highball family, with the bottle that changed.

• Vodka & Tonicwith tonic water
• Vodka Sodawith soda water
• Palomatequila for vodka
• Gin Fizzgin and lemon juice for vodka and grapefruit juice
• Tom Collinsgin and lemon juice for vodka and grapefruit juice
• Mojitolight rum and lime juice for vodka and grapefruit juice