The Greyhound is the plainest of pleasures: a wash of tart grapefruit juice over vodka, poured tall on ice. At four parts juice to one of spirit, the grapefruit's bitter-sour bite does all the talking while the vodka stays quiet underneath, leaving a pale, cold, bracing drink that a squeeze of lime can sharpen further.
Garnish: Lime Wedge
Built · Highball · On the Rocks
build
Fill a highball glass with ice cubes.
add
Pour the vodka over the ice.
top
Top with the grapefruit juice (roughly a 4:1 grapefruit-to-spirit ratio).
stir
Give it a brief stir to combine.
garnish
Garnish with a lime (or lemon) wedge.
No single inventor is on record — the drink borrows its name from Greyhound, the bus line, whose Post House restaurants served a version at their terminal counters, and a 1945 issue of Harper's Magazine is the earliest place the name turns up in print. Harry Craddock had already sketched the idea with a "grapefruit cocktail" in his Savoy Cocktail Book of 1930. Gin was the original base until vodka displaced it in the years after the Second World War. Rim the glass with salt and the same drink goes by another name — the Salty Dog.