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.

 

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.

Ward Eight.jpg

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.

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.

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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.

Episode 24: Monkey Gland

  • 2 oz London dry gin

  • 1 oz fresh orange juice

  • .5 oz real grenadine

  • Dash of Absinthe

  • Orange twist

Add the gin, orange juice, & grenadine to a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake until frosty. Add a dash of Absinthe to a chilled coupe or martini glass, and swirl around the glass to “rinse” the glass with the absinthe. Strain the cocktail into the absinthe rinsed glass and garnish with an orange twist.

*notes: The original recipe for the Monkey Gland called for equal parts (1.5 oz each) gin and orange juice, but most modern bartenders prefer this updated version.

The quality of the grenadine you use makes a difference. Real grenadine should have pomegranate juice in the ingredients. If not, don’t use it. You can find it online easily or make your own.

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The Monkey gland was invented sometime at the end of the 1910s and became popular during the Prohibition era.

The name of the drink references a Russian-born French surgeon named Dr. Sergei Voronoff who thought that the sex glands of living organisms held the key to health, vigor, and longevity. During the 1910s and 20s, he performed expensive surgeries to graft the testicles of monkeys onto his patients, promising “a life span of 125 years and an old age of a few months.” His work became world famous, and by 1927 Voronoff had done more than 1,000 procedures on his wealthy patients. In reality, his work did absolutely nothing, and he was finally discredited by the 1940s.

Nevertheless, at the end of the 1910s he and his work were a pop culture phenomenon and the Monkey Gland was invented in either Paris or London in tribute. In 1919, a New York Times story carried the headline, “MONKEY GLAND’ LATEST COCKTAIL”, and it wasn’t long before it became a hit in the United States as well. Beyond Voronoff’s mad scientist reputation, the cocktail may have also become such a hit because it contained a small dash of absinthe, which was banned in much of Europe as well as the U.S. because of it’s supposed (but now debunked) hallucinogenic properties. Many bars still had a few bottles of absinthe left after the ban, and the Monkey Gland used so little that they could make it stretch while still giving the cocktail a forbidden and exciting feeling.

No matter the reason, this gussied up gin and juice is surprisingly delicious!