Episode 66: Kamikaze

• 2 ounces vodka

• 1 ounce triple sec

• 1 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice

• Lime wedge, for garnish

 Pour vodka, triple sec, and lime juice into a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake until frosty, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a lime wedge.

When researching the history of the kamikaze, most sources claim that the drink was invented at a bar on a naval base in Japan in the 1950s but didn’t make its way to the U.S. until the 1970s. This story seems to be more fiction than fact though, since most of these same sources say that the kamikaze was initially created as a shot but was so drinkable that it was eventually scaled up to a cocktail. But shots weren’t really a thing yet in the 50s.

The more likely origin story is that the Kamikaze didn’t become popular until the 70s because it wasn’t actually invented until the 70s. Because it was initially created as a shot, it was particularly popular with young people, especially sporty New Yorkers who liked to go skiing and sailing on weekends.

Two sport specific magazines from the 1970s appear to point to two possible origin stories. One, taken from the pages of Motorboating and Sailing magazine, claims that a bartender named Tony Lauriano created the Kamikaze in New York City in 1972. The story goes that he originally wanted to name the drink the Jesus Christ Superstar after the famous broadway show, but people thought the name was too weird and too long so he changed it to kamikaze. Another article, this one from Ski Magazine, claims the Kamikaze was originally invented in Florida in the early 70s but didn’t become popular until it spread to New York.

As is the case with a lot of cocktails, there’s no way to know for certain which story is true, but they both seem much more plausible than the story of the 1950s naval base.

Either way, we know that by 1975 the Kamikaze was popular enough that one liquor company was selling a pre-mixed Kamikaze cocktail in a bottle. While the shot version of the Kamikaze is mostly vodka with just a tiny bit of lime and triple sec for flavor, the cocktail version increases the ratio of mixers to spirit to 2 parts vodka to 1 part triple sec and 1 part lime juice. By the 80s the delicious and drinkable cocktail version was almost as popular as the boozier shot version.

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Episode 56: Harvey Wallbanger

• 1.5 oz Vodka

• 4 oz Orange juice

• .5 oz Galliano

Combine vodka and orange juice in a glass filled with ice and stir. Pour the Galliano over a barspoon held over the top of the glass so that it floats on top of the drink. Garnish with an orange slice.

Made with vodka, orange juice, and a splash of Galliano (a sweet, herbal, vanilla flavored Italian liqueur), essentially a Harvey Wallbanger is just a gussied up screwdriver.

The most common origin story you’ll find when looking for the history of the Harvey Wallbanger is that a Bartender named Donato “Duke” Antone created it in the early 1950s at his Blackwatch Bar on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Supposedly a local surfer and bar regular named Tom Harvey came into the bar after losing a surfing competition and asked for his favorite cocktail that Duke made. After getting a little drunk, he supposedly started venting about losing the competition and eventually started banging his head against the wall in frustration. Some stories just say he got so drunk he banged into the wall, but either way, Harvey. Wall. Banger. The end.

From there the cocktail puttered along until sometime in the 1960s when a marketing director for a liquor importer came up with a tagline and a cartoon for the cocktail in an attempt to boost Galliano sales. By the 70s it was one of the most popular cocktails in the country.

However, there are a few problems with this story. First of all, a surfer from Manhattan beach going all the way to Sunset Boulevard for a fancy screwdriver is hard to believe. Also, cocktail historians haven’t been able to find any written record of a competition surfer named Tom Harvey.

Not only that, but Antone is also supposedly responsible for creating a bunch of other well-known cocktails like the Rusty Nail, the White Russian, the Kamakazi, and the Freddie Fudpucker; and some people say he was actually taking credit for cocktails he didn’t actually create himself. While he was quoted many times in newspapers about some of his most famous drinks, he never even mentioned the Harvey Wallbanger in print until the early 1970s, some 20 years after he supposedly invented it.

Also, in addition to owning the Blackwatch bar in Hollywood, Antone also worked for both Galliano and Smirnoff Vodka as a corporate mixologist. So, the more likely story is that there never was a real surfer, it was just a story concocted by a marketing department to go along with a cocktail that a corporate mixologist either created himself or stole from another bartender.

Either way, by the end of 1969 the cartoon mascot for the Harvey Wallbanger was everywhere. On pop art posters, bumper stickers, buttons, t-shirts, and mugs.  According to David Wondrich, with the Harvey mascot “to blaze the way, Antone’s simple—even dopey—drink would go on to be the first drink created by a consultant to actually take the nation by storm.”

 Thanks to this ad campaign, Galliano became the number one most imported liqueur in the 70s, exporting 500,000 cases a year to the U.S.

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Episode 46: Sea Breeze

• 2 oz vodka

• 3 oz cranberry juice

• 1 1/2 grapefruit juice

• Lime slice for garnish (optional)

Fill a tall glass with ice. Pour Vodka and Cranberry into glass and stir. Top with Grapefruit juice. Garnish with lime and serve with a straw.

Most of us think of the Sea Breeze as a cocktail from the 1980s, and while they certainly were very popular then, they actually first blew up at the end of the 1960s thanks to some high profile marketing.

In the early 60s, vodka’s popularity hit a stumbling block thanks to the cold war and the fact that Americans saw vodka as a Russian liquor. So, the people at Smirnoff threw a bunch of money into rebranding, and by the end of the decade, gin was out, and vodka was taking over as America’s clear liquor of choice.

Part of the reason they were so successful was a push to find vodka based cocktails that were easy to make and easy to drink. Thanks to big vodka’s marketing dollars, a whole category of vodka based “coolers” took off at the end of the 60s. It started with the cape codder, or vodka & cranberry which used to go by the name “Harpoon” when it was made with gin. But there was also the greyhound – vodka and grapefruit juice, and the salty dog, which added a salt rim to a greyhound. Then there was the sea breeze, which combined the cranberry and grapefruit juices, and the bay breeze, which was made with cranberry and pineapple juice.

This on its own probably would have been enough to make these vodka based coolers into American cocktail classics, but as it turned out, vodka wasn’t the only beverage in the 60s that needed a rebrand.

In 1959, a bunch of cranberries in the Pacific Northwest were found to contain traces of an herbicide called aminotriazole, which is basically a bog weed killer that caused cancer in lab rats. The U.S. Secretary of Health told people to stay away from cranberries if they didn’t know exactly where they were coming from, and cranberry farmers took a huge hit.

Enter a little cranberry farmer’s collective that formed in 1930 called the Cranberry Growers Cooperative. Today we know them better as Ocean Spray. In the 60s, to try to get people to start buying cranberries again, they started publishing recipe cards, booklets, and newsletters with all kinds of cranberry and cranberry juice recipes.

At the same time that vodka was pushing for simple fruity cocktails, Ocean Spray was also pushing cranberry juice as a great mixer for boozy drinks. That’s why so many of the vodka coolers that became so popular at the time called for cranberry juice. By the end of the 60s, these “breeze” drinks started appearing in the top ten most popular mixed drinks of the era.

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Episode 43: Long Island Iced Tea

• 3/4 ounce vodka

• 3/4 ounce white rum

• 3/4 ounce silver tequila

• 3/4 ounce gin

• 3/4 ounce triple sec

• 3/4 ounce simple syrup

• 3/4 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed

• Cola, to top

• Garnish: lemon wedge

Add the vodka, rum, tequila, gin, triple sec, simple syrup and lemon juice to a Collins glass filled with ice. Top off with a splash of cola and stir gently to combine. Garnish with a lemon wedge and serve with a straw.

The Long Island Iced Tea was created in 1972 by a bartender named Robert "Rosebud" Butt at the Oak Beach Inn in Long Island, New York.

Butt has said, "The world-famous Long Island Iced Tea was first invented in 1972 by me, Robert Butt, while I was tending bar at the infamous Oak Beach Inn. I participated in a cocktail creating contest. Triple Sec had to be included, and the bottles started flying. My concoction was an immediate hit and quickly became the house drink at the Oak Beach Inn. By the mid-1970s, every bar on Long Island was serving up this innocent-looking cocktail, and by the 1980s it was known the world over."

Obviously this drink is boozy AF – which could be why it took off as an almost instant classic. It’s sweet, and it’s strong, but doesn’t taste strong. It might also be because the recipe is so easy to remember and to make – with all the ingredients in the same amount.

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Episode 41: Ward Eight

• 2 ounces rye whiskey

• 1/2 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed

• 1/2 ounce orange juice, freshly squeezed

• 1/2 ounce (real) grenadine *see note

• Garnish: maraschino cherries and an orange slice

Add the rye whiskey, lemon and orange juices and grenadine to a shaker with ice and shake until well-chilled. Strain into a tall glass with ice and garnish with cherries and an orange slice

*note: Real pomegranate-based grenadine has a much nicer flavor than the bright red sugar syrup from the supermarket.

The origin stories for many historic cocktails can be sometimes be difficult to trace or confirm, but the Ward Eight isn’t one of those cocktails.

The Ward Eight is one of, if not the, most popular cocktail ever created in Boston, Massachusetts. It was conceived in 1898 at the Locke-Ober Café to celebrate the election of Martin M. Lomasney to the state legislature. Lomasney was a politician who wielded considerable power in Boston for 40 years, serving as a state senator and representative, as well as a political “boss” in the city’s eighth ward (hence the name). Some stories point out that it’s odd that Lomasney was so sure of he’d win before election day that he had the bar create a new cocktail just for his victory party. Rumor has it he had fixed the election.

We’ll never know for sure, but we do know that the Ward Eight is essentially just a riff on a rye Whiskey Sour sans egg white. You substitute some of the lemon juice for orange juice and swap out the simple syrup for grenadine.

While we do know when and where this cocktail was invented, the recipe itself wasn’t actually written down at the time, so the exact recipe is disputed and there are some variations on it. The most popular recipe is a mix of rye whiskey, lemon and orange juices, and grenadine. Most recipes out there seem to be very similar but some omit the orange juice.

Many modern bartenders today will serve this straight up in a chilled coupe or cocktail glass, but when it was first invented it would have been served over ice in a tall Collins glass.

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Episode 39: Colonial Stone Fence

• 2 ounces of dark rum

• Hard cider (tart, dry, funky cider is best) *see note

• Garnish options: lemon, sliced apple, or fresh herbs

Pour rum over ice in a tall bar or collins glass. Top off with cider and garnish with a lemon twist, a slice of apple, or a sprig of mint if desired.

*Note: This will produce a Stone Fence similar to the one Colonial Americans might have enjoyed. If you prefer, feel free to substitute a sweeter, fruitier cider for a more modern flavor.

In the 1770s, The Catamount Tavern, in what is now Vermont, was Ethan Allen’s home bar and also served as the headquarters for the Green Mountain Boys militia group that he commanded.

Legend has it that the night before their pre-dawn capture of Fort Ticonderoga from the British in 1775, Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold and the Green Mountain Boys were drinking round after round of Stone Fence cocktails. This colonial new England classic gave them the liquid courage needed to take the fort by surprise.

The Stone Fence is probably named after the primitive stacked stone fences surrounding farmland all over New England. In the days of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, it was made with tart hard cider and dark molasses-y New England rum.  Over the years though, the drink evolved. About a century later, when Jerry Thomas published a recipe, his Stone Fence was made with sweet nonalcoholic pressed cider and bourbon whiskey. While the Jerry Thomas version is undeniably delicious, this recipe is closer to the original 18th century version.

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Episode 33: The Sex on the Beach

• 2 ounces vodka

• 1/2 ounce peach schnapps

• 1 1/2 ounces orange juice

• 1 1/2 ounces cranberry juice

• Ice

• Optional Garnish: Orange slice, maraschino cherry, cocktail umbrella  

Fill a hurricane glass or a large highball glass with ice. Pour vodka, schnapps, & orange juice over the ice, and then slowly & carefully top with cranberry juice for a layered effect. Garnish with an orange slice, a maraschino cherry, and a cocktail umbrella. Serve with a straw to stir the drink together.

By the 1980s, American cocktail culture had lost it’s way a bit. We’d moved as far as possible from the carefully crafted, well balanced cocktails of the past and replaced them with anything and everything sweet, fruity, colorful, and easy to make. If you could taste the alcohol, you were doing it wrong.

Vodka was especially popular in the 80s, as was orange juice (boxed not fresh), along with fruity flavored liqueurs, tropical flavors, bright colors, layered cocktails and shots, and drinks with sexy names.

When it comes to typical cocktails of the 1980s, the Sex on the Beach has it all!

As for the drink’s history, one origin story claims that a bartender named Ted invented the drink in 1987 at a Florida bar called Confetti’s. He says he was challenged to a peach schnapps sales contest and invented the sex on the beach to appeal to spring breakers. Unfortunately for this story, the recipe had appeared in print in 1982, 5 years before Ted claimed to have “invented” it.

The more likely origin story is that a bartender simply combined the Fuzzy Navel (made with orange juice and peach schnapps) and a Cape Codder (made with vodka and cranberry juice) into one fruity concoction.

Either way, people loved a sexy name, and when TGI Friday’s added the drink to their cocktail menu, it reached 80s cult cocktail status.

There are several variations on this cocktail. Some people add Chambord berry flavored liqueur. Some add pineapple juice. Some recipes even replace the cranberry juice with grenadine. This version is by far the most common and popular though.

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Episode 30: The White Russian

• 2 oz vodka

• 2 oz khalua

• 2 oz light cream or half & half

Pour vodka and khalua over ice in a rocks glass & stir. Gently pour the cream over the top. You can stir in the cream to combine everything, but I think it looks nicer if you keep the layer of cream separate on top and let the drinker stir it together themselves.

The recipe for the White Russian first appeared in print in the Oakland Tribune in 1965. The recipe was simple, it called for, “1oz. each Southern, vodka, cream”. “Southern” was short for “Coffee Southern”, which was a popular brand of coffee liqueur that used to be made by Southern Comfort. It’s not around anymore so most people use Khalua today.

The funny thing about the name of the White Russian is that the recipe doesn’t come from Russia and there’s nothing particularly Russian about it. It turns out though, that before the 1950s, vodka wasn’t very popular in the US, and at one point it was considered a strange, foreign spirit that was only consumed in Russia. When people outside Russia first started drinking it, they gave vodka based cocktails names that had the word Russia in them, or at least a nod to Russia, like the Moscow Mule.

It took a few years after the recipe was first published to really take off, but by the 70s, the White Russian was everywhere. It’s strong, easy to make, and easy to drink, and people in the 70s loved it. After the 70s though, popularity fizzled and it almost disappeared until 1998 when The Big Lebowski came out and made it popular again.

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Episode 29: The Knickerbocker

• 2 ½ oz gold rum

• 1 teaspoon orange curacao liqueur

• ½ oz raspberry syrup (see below for recipe)

• ½ oz fresh lime juice (save lime “shell” for garnish)

• Fresh raspberries for garnish

Combine rum, curacao, raspberry syrup, & lime juice in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake until frosty. Strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice.

To garnish, flatten a squeezed-out half lime shell into a “cap” and place on top of the drink, then top with a few fresh raspberries before serving.  

Raspberry Syrup

• 2 cups of demerara sugar

• Pinch of salt

• 1 cup of water

• 12 oz raspberries (fresh or frozen)

Stir sugar and water over low heat until sugar has dissolved. Turn off heat, add raspberries, and stir and crush the raspberries until they’re broken up into a pulp. Strain into a jar and refrigerate for up to a week.
Any syrup not used within a week can be frozen for later use.

In 1809, Washington Irving published “A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty”, under the name "Diedrich Knickerbocker".

The name Knickerbocker originally came from a style of pants that Dutch settlers wore, but thanks to this book, the word came to signify an upper-crusty New Yorker who could trace their ancestry to the original Dutch settlers. Before long though, people just started using the word to mean anything and everything New York-y.

City leaders started naming streets and landmarks “knickerbocker”. Businesses across the city started naming themselves things like Knickerbocker Magazine or Knickerbocker beer, there’s a Knickerbocker hotel, and even the name of the New York Knicks is short for knickerbocker.

It’s not surprising that the name also attached itself to a cocktail. The new drink started being mentioned in newspapers in the 1850s, and then Jerry Thomas published the first written recipe for the drink in 1862. It’s made with golden rum, orange curacao (triple sec), lime juice, and raspberry syrup, which was basically the grenadine of the 19th century.

There are a bunch of variations on this cocktail now with a ton of added ingredients, but this version is almost identical to the original Jerry Thomas recipe.  

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Episode 28: The Gin Rickey

• 2 oz gin

• ½ oz fresh lime juice

• ¼ oz simple syrup (optional) *see note

• Club soda

• Garnish: lime wheels & twist

Fill a highball glass with ice. Add gin & lime juice (& simple syrup if desired). Stir & top with soda water. Garnish with lime wheels and/or a lime twist.

*note: The original recipe doesn’t call for simple syrup, but modern bartenders have found that a touch of sweetness can help bring out the flavor of the lime juice. We tried it both ways and liked preferred it with the syrup.

The Gin Rickey is one of the few classic cocktails with a clear and well documented origin story.

The first version, made with bourbon, was invented by bartender George A. Williamson around 1880 at Shoomaker’s Bar in DC. It was named after a democratic lobbyist named Colonel Joseph Kyle Rickey (better known as Joe Rickey).

Rickey didn’t like sweet drinks, and usually liked to drink bourbon combined with carbonated water. One day, he asked the bartender at Shoomaker’s to add some lime to his highball, and the Bourbon Rickey was born. Joe Rickey actually purchased the bar in 1883 & went on to become a major lime importer.

The Rickey took off, and before long people were customizing the drink to their liking, substituting other liquors for the bourbon. In 1882 the Gin Rickey first appeared in print, and has been a huge hit ever since. The gin version quickly became more popular than the original bourbon version, and by the 1910s & 20s it was everywhere. In fact, it was even mentioned in the 1925 classic, “The Great Gatsby,” when Tom Buchanan served his guests a platter of Rickeys.

In 2011, more than a century after its creation, the Rickey was declared Washington D.C.’s official cocktail.

Many confuse the Rickey with the Collins cocktail, but the Collins is made with lemon juice instead of lime, and always contains sugar or simple syrup.

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