Welcome To Sunday Day Drinking, With Today's Cocktail, The Arnold Palmer!

Plus some little cocktail weenies. Because.

Sigh. A good drink, now ruined by DJT, as is the case with so many things.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender, and for some reason I woke up this morning and felt a need to provide an Arnold Palmer recipe for you. I am actually quite fond of this summertime beverage. I cranked out a ton of these as a country club bartender, and my grandparents always had a pitcher in the fridge at their coastal North Carolina home. I’m annoyed that I won’t be able to order one again without the jokes. Still, when life gives you lemons … Without further ado, here’s how I made Arnold Palmers at the country club. And to go with our drinks, let’s devour some little weenies. For no reason. 

Country Club Arnold Palmer

4 oz Country Time Lemonade, double strength

4 oz brewed iced tea

Pour the lemonade into a highball glass filled with chipped ice. Pour the iced tea slowly over the back of a spoon into the glass. Garnish with a lemon wedge and straw. Stir before drinking.

John Daly

2 oz Country Time Lemonade, double strength

2 oz brewed iced tea

2 oz Tito’s Vodka

Add all ingredients to a highball glass filled with chipped ice and stir well. Garnish with a lemon wedge and straw. 

Cocktail Weenies

1 20 oz package precooked cocktail frankfurters

12 oz chili sauce 

10 oz grape jelly

Heat chili sauce and grape jelly in a skillet over medium heat, stirring constantly, until jelly melts. Add franks and stir until coated. Simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve hot with wooden toothpicks. These can also be kept warm in a slow cooker.

According to legend, this drink got its name in the 1960s, when a woman overheard Arnold Palmer order a lemonade and tea and requested “that Palmer drink” for herself. The name for this beverage entered the public eye in 2002, when AriZona Iced Tea started marketing bottled versions of the drink. (AriZona adamantly defends the trademark for this beverage. Liquid Death sold the same thing as an “Armless Palmer,” now the “Dead Billionaire,” and Chick-Fi-La calls it a Sunjoy.) Arnold Palmer was a devoted Republican, but he absolutely loathed Donald Trump. Unlike the majority of golfers I met at the club, Arnold Palmer had dignity and class, and Donald’s lack thereof thoroughly disgusted Arnie. 

As long as we’re talking about classless golfers, we should mention the vodka-spiked version of this drink, the John Daly. John Daly is a rotund professional golfer who dresses like a tropical low-rent Santa Claus. He’s well known for the amount of alcohol he puts away. He is, unsurprisingly, a big fan of Trump. Mr. Daly recently endorsed a brand of hard lemonade. I urge you not to try it. 

This version of the Arnold Palmer uses cheap artificial ingredients, specifically Country Time Lemonade. A made-from-scratch state fair lemonade would obviously taste better, but it wouldn’t have the specific gravity needed to layer the beverage. Layering an Arnold Palmer is easy once you get the knack of it, and always earned me an extra buck or two in tips. Both the tea and lemonade are very strong in this version of the drink; in theory, you’re drinking this on a hot day and the ice dilutes the drink quickly. 

For giggles, I thought I’d add in a ‘60s era cocktail snack for this article, because little weenies, right? Turns out that these little frankies are pretty tasty. Bottled chili sauce and grape jelly makes for a rather decent old-school barbecue sauce. Add in some Dijon mustard, sriracha, gojuchang, or chili crisp if you want a modern take on these, but the traditional Betty Crocker recipe holds up well. They can’t sit around for too long, though. Small weenies like this shrivel up when they get too old. (I am SO PROUD I got this far into the article without a double entendre.)

Let’s talk ingredients:

Ingredient and snack shot. The little weenies look gross, but it’s what you do with them that … oh, never mind.

Country Time Lemonade: Double this amount of powder to water the packaging suggests. My bosses at the club always got mad when I used up powdered lemonade this fast, but a few extra pennies of citric acid and sugar earned me extra tips, so screw them. I have tried making lemonade from scratch to use for an Arnold Palmer, but it doesn’t have the strength needed to layer the drink.

Lipton Iced Tea: Use your favorite brand of black tea. Cheap is fine; Lipton is a step up from the generic prepackaged sawdust we used at the club. I used three tea bags with 8 ounces of hot water for this drink. Discard the tea bags after five minutes. Don’t refrigerate the tea; it will become cloudy. The tea and lemonade are strong enough to make layering very easy, but if you added booze to the drink it won’t separate. 

Tito’s Vodka: Tito’s was far and away the vodka of choice at the country club. Southern Living suggests bourbon instead of vodka in your John Daly, but I think it’s too far to lend John Daly’s beverage that sort of class. Drink what you like. Lord knows the last two weeks of this election will require strong medicine. 

Cocktail Franks: I attempted to pick out the most old-school versions of the ingredients for this cocktail snack. Arnie would certainly have seen these at the country club buffet or a cocktail party. I figured they’d be good for a laugh, but darned if I can stay away from them. And they do benefit from a little sit time, to let the sauce do its work. 

Chili Sauce: I used Bookbinders, but Heinz or its adjacent would be just fine.  

Grape Jelly: Good ol’ Smucker’s is all you want. If the chili sauce has more heat than you’d prefer, add a little more jelly. 

In summary and conclusion, drink well, drink often, and tip your bartender — donate to Wonkette at the link below!  

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DRINK!