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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Episdoe 64: Greyhound

• 2 oz Vodka

• 4 oz Grapefruit Juice (pink is sweeter and prettier) 

• Lemon or grapefruit twist

Pour the vodka and grapefruit juice into an old-fashioned glass over ice and stir to combine and chill. Garnish with a twist if desired.

We know that the first published recipe for a cocktail made with grapefruit juice similar to the greyhound was in 1930 in Harry Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book. This recipe wasn’t called a greyhound though, and it was made with gin, not vodka. It wasn’t until 1945 that Harper’s magazine finally published a recipe for a Greyhound made with vodka.

As it turns out, the Greyhound bus line used to own a chain of restaurants called Greyhound Post House that were located in their bus terminals so people could eat during their travels without having to leave the bus station. When Harper’s published their Greyhound recipe in 1945, they wrote that the recipe was popular in the Post House Restaurants and that’s why they called the cocktail a greyhound. Who knew this delicious classic was named after a bus line?

In the following decades, greyhounds remained popular, thanks largely to vodka marketing dollars. In the 1960s, most Vodka brands had Russian sounding names, and they were worried about public perception during the cold war, so they put a ton of money into marketing and PR to help people forget the Russian ties. A large part of their marketing was finding recipes that were super simple and easy to make at home with just a handful of ingredients, which is part of the reason the Greyhound remains such a classic even to this day.

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Episode 57: Cosmpolitan

• 2 ounces vodka

• 1 ounce cranberry juice cocktail

• ¾ ounce fresh lime juice

• ¾ ounce triple sec (Cointreau)

• Orange or lemon twist (garnish) 

Combine vodka, cranberry juice, lime juice, and triple sec in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake vigorously until frosty.

Strain into a chilled martini glass. I recommend double straining to capture any ice shards broken off in the shaker. Garnish with an orange or lemon twist if desired.

There are few cocktails more immediately recognizable than a Cosmopolitan. This blush-pink cocktail with sweet-tart blend of vodka, triple sec, cranberry and lime juices served in a tall martini glass is completely synonymous with 1999 or the early 2000s. That’s because, while the cocktail was around earlier and had some moderate popularity, the cosmo didn’t become the ubiquitous girly drink we know it as today until it appeared in the second season of Sex and the City in 1999. After that the drink made several cameos on the show, and for a good decade became one of, if not the, most popular cocktail in America.

So we know why the cosmo blew up in 1999, but we don’t know exactly who invented it or when or where, because about a dozen different origin stories exist.  

Some people believe it evolved from a 1930s era cocktail called a Cosmopolitan Daisy that was made with gin, Cointreau, Lemon Juice, and Raspberry Syrup. Others believe it was invented by the gay community in Provincetown in the 60s or 70s. Some say it came out of Ocean Spray’s quest for easy cranberry juice cocktails in the 1960s. A very popular cocktail called the Harpoon is basically a cosmo without the triple sec, so many believe that’s where they come from. Others believe it was a play on a Kamikaze. Bartending legend and author Gaz Regan, believes the original Cosmopolitan was created in 1985 in Miami Beach by bartender Cheryl Cook when she added citrus flavored vodka and cranberry juice to a Kamikaze and served it in a Martini glass. Some believe that Dale DeGroff came up with the cosmo at the Rainbow Room in New York, and others still believe that Toby Cecchini first did at New York’s Odeon restaurant in Tribeca.

What we do know is that before Sex and the city, Cecchini’s Odeon version using Absolut Citron and Cointreau was by far the most popular and well known recipe out there. The Odeon was a very trendy restaurant and the cosmo spread from there all over Manhattan, which is probably how it landed on Sex and the City in the first place.   

And the rest is history.

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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 42: Bloody Mary

• 2 ounces vodka

• 4 ounces tomato juice

• ½ ounce lemon juice

• 2 dashes hot sauce (you can add more to taste)

• 2 dashes Worcestershire sauce

• 2 teaspoons prepared horseradish

• 1 pinch ground black pepper

• 1 pinch smoked paprika

• 1 pinch celery salt OR Old Bay Seafood Seasoning

• Garnish: celery stalk

• Optional additional garnishes: green olives, lemon wedges, cornichon pickles, cocktail onions, pickled green beans

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Don’t shake too vigorously, as not to dilute the tomato juice. It’s better to gently swirl the drink until the shaker feels frosty. Pour over ice and garnish with a celery stick. If desired, add a skewer with another optional garnish or combination of garnishes.

The Bloody Mary has one of the haziest histories of any cocktail I’ve tried to research. There are several possible origin stories, probably because the recipe has always been evolving and almost encourages tweaking and customization. The most common story about where the Bloody Mary came from is that a bartender named Fernand Petiot invented it in the early 1920s at the famed Harry’s New York Bar in Paris.

As the story goes, Petiot invented the drink because Russians were moving to Paris fleeing the revolution and they had a taste for vodka. He found vodka flavorless though, so he mixed it with canned tomato juice and seasonings. After Prohibition, he brought the drink to Manhattan when he worked at the King Cole Bar in the St. Regis Hotel. The management made him change the name to Red Snapper instead, but it didn’t really stick. In the 40s he started adding even more ingredients, like hot sauce, horseradish, lemon juice, and celery salt and his jazzed up, spicier version really caught on. 

While that story does sound believable, cocktail historian Jack McGarry points out that if the Bloody Mary had been invented in Paris in the 1920s, it would likely have appeared in one (if not several) of the many cocktail books being written about Paris’ cocktail scene at the time. He believes that the Bloody Mary was more likely invented by an early Hollywood comedian named George Jessel.

In his autobiography, Jessel said he invented the drink in 1927 in Palm Beach, Florida. He said that he and a buddy were trying to come up with a hangover cure when a bartender at their hotel reached behind the bar. "’Here, Georgie, try this,’ he said, holding up a dusty bottle I had never seen before. ‘They call it vodkee. We've had it for six years and nobody has ever asked for it’... I looked at it, sniffed it. It was pretty pungent. ‘Hell, what have we got to lose? Get me some Worcestershire sauce, some tomato juice, and lemon; that ought to kill the smell.’”

That’s when, he said, a socialite named Mary Brown Warburton walked in. 'Here, Mary, take a taste of this and see what you think of it.' Just as she did, she spilled some down the front of her white evening gown, took one look at the mess, and laughed, 'Now, you can call me Bloody Mary, George!'

Later, in an interview with the New Yorker in 1964, Petiot seemingly admitted Jessel’s version came first. "I initiated the Bloody Mary of today... Jessel said he created it, but it was really nothing but vodka and tomato juice when I took it over."

So, it appears that Jessel created a simple version of the Bloody Mary in Florida, but it didn’t become the cocktail we know today until Petiot moved to New York and started tweaking it and added new flavors and spices. As for the celery stick garnish, Neither Jessel nor Petiot were responsible for that. The celery stick was most likely was added at a restaurant in Chicago called the Pump Room in the 50s or 60s, though printed recipes don’t reference the celery garnish until 1979.

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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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