In the late eighties when restaurateur Tom Turner was getting ready to open Gar Woods in Carnelian Bay, he needed a signature drink. Lake Tahoe has a deep history with Gar Wood motorboats (named after its founder Garfield Wood and nicknamed Woodys), and the Sierra Boat Company next door has restored Chris-Crafts, Gar Woods, and other classic wooden boats since 1952.
So, Turner sat with his friends at the former Jake’s at the Lake in Tahoe City and tried different liquors when they came up with a rum drink introduced in conjunction with the Gar Woods restaurant. Turner decided to call it the Wet Woody.
“Which is a double entendre, right?” Turner adds. The name of the drink spun off into suggestive puns and became synonymous with the laid-back vibe one gets while sitting lakeside on vacation.
Gar Woods opened at 5000 Lake Tahoe Boulevard in 1988 with the Wet Woody, a rum drink blended with ice. However, it wasn’t that popular until he met a guy in 1993 from Sacramento who sold Taylor slushy machines. Turner got one to better make the Wet Woody, and it became a hit.
Turner believes they sold the first million Wet Woodys by 1998, the same year they opened Riva Grill at the end of Ski Run Boulevard in South Lake Tahoe. With two restaurants serving the Wet Woody lakeside, Turner thinks they sold their second million of the frozen rum drink between both restaurants by 2004.
“Then it picked up steam,” Turner recalls.
The Tahoe Restaurant Collection opened Caliente in Kings Beach in 2007 (which has since closed) and sold the tequila-based frozen drink called the ChupaCabra. In 2012, it opened Bar of America in downtown Truckee with a whiskey-based frozen drink called The Cock-Tail (stirred with a rooster’s tail feather). However, since these are similar yet not-quite-the-original Gar Woods drink, they are not counted towards the total number of Wet Woodys sold.
Flash forward to August 2021, and Turner opens the Sparks Water Bar on the northern end of Sparks Marina Park Lake. Along with selling hand-cut steaks, Pacific seafood, and California cuisine, the now world-famous Wet Woody is also served. Around that time, the Bucket of Blood in Virginia City and The Blue Light on 1979 Union Street in San Francisco also started selling the Wet Woody.
“[Those owners] were good friends of mine who wanted to sell it, so I charged them a $1 licensing fee to serve it,” Turner says.
There are around 20 variations of the Wet Woody with some names that can’t be put on the menu because it would be too offensive (my favorite version is the Wet Dream with a Sailor Jerry floater and cream) but many of them are described in connotations adults would understand but kids wouldn’t. (Although, I can see the conversation now– “What’s ‘Mount Your Woody’ mean, mom?” “Well, it’s a Wet Woody topped with Mount Gay Rum, honey. Duh.”)
Turner says they were going to do a special dirty 30 name for the Wet Woodys’ 30th anniversary; “but the names people came up with…we would go to jail,” he says. “People have two drinks and get creative. We received about 20 names, many not worth repeating,” he adds.
You have to get a rum-based floater to go with the name, so for instance, one person suggested a name kind of related to the Dockside rum but replace the “d” with the letter in the alphabet that comes before that, and you get the dirty Gar Woods version.
And now that paper straws are served with the Wet Woody, it opens the door to put funny sayings on it, like “wrap your lips around this” or “it won’t suck itself.” After letting out a little gasp, Turner says, “It’s true!”
Gar Woods holds special Topless Tuesdays in the winter and Wet Woody Wednesdays in the late fall/early spring where they’ll offer discounts on the famous drink.
Considering the Tahoe Restaurant Group and its partners sell about 150,000 Wet Woodys a year, they reached the four million sold mark in summer 2025. Turner thinks they’ll probably hit five million Wet Woodys sold by 2030.
“It’s fun, and I haven’t gotten kicked out of North Shore yet [with the play on the Wet Woody name],” says Turner.
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the Summer 2026 edition of Tahoe Magazine.
