The Harvey Wallbanger is a mixed drink made with vodka, Galliano, and orange juice. It is a variant of the screwdriver, and was very popular in the United States in the 1970s.
| Cocktail | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Mixed drink |
| Base spirit | |
| Served | On the rocks: poured over ice |
| Standard garnish | orange slice and maraschino cherry |
| Standard drinkware | .svg) |
| Commonly used ingredients |
|
| Preparation | Stir the vodka and orange juice with ice in the glass, then float the Galliano on top. Garnish and serve. |
| Commonly served | All day |
History
The Harvey Wallbanger was created in 1969 as a marketing campaign by McKesson Imports Company, importer of Galliano, as a means of driving sales of Galliano. The campaign was headed by George Bednar, marketing director of McKesson, and a cartoon character was commissioned from graphic artist William J. "Bill" Young in Lima, New York,[1][2] with the tagline that Bednar claimed to have penned: "Harvey Wallbanger is the name. And I can be made!"[3][4][5] The Harvey Wallbanger character was a surfer, appearing in various ads during the campaign, and was mentioned in print as early as 1969,[3] continuing into the 1970s.[6][7] The recipe displayed in the ads is:[1] "6 oz. O.J., 1 oz. vodka, stir with ice, splash in ½ oz. Galliano".
The cocktail itself is credited to three-time world champion mixologist Donato "Duke" Antone, of Hartford, Connecticut, where he ran a bartending school, Bartending School of Mixology and worked as a cocktail consultant.[3] It is unclear if Antone designed the drink for Galliano (to advertise the ingredient),[3] or renamed an existing drink, as suggested by his grandson, who claimed the earlier version was called "Duke's Screwdriver".[8] An implausible story of the origin is that it was invented in 1952 by Antone, and named after a surfer frequenting Antone's Blackwatch Bar on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. This is implausible because at the time, Antone was running a bartending school in Hartford, and there is no evidence of any "Blackwatch Bar" in Los Angeles at the time, so it is presumably a fabrication; spirits writer Robert Simonson goes so far as to say that "no sane person ever believed that story."[8]
Cocktail historian David Wondrich considers the Harvey Wallbanger the first successful consultant-created cocktail saying,
With Young's Harvey 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.[3]
Antone is also credited with the Freddy Fudpucker, which swaps vodka for tequila, but this was not nearly as popular.[citation needed]
References
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