Meet the Harvey Wallbanger, the Screwdriver’s Grown-Up Cousin

By WineBottleMag
November 17, 2024
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“Disco drinks” of the 1970s and 1980s are having a moment, as foamy amaretto sours and blush Cosmos grace happy hour menus once again. Among these, another popular ’70s cocktail has endured, though it flies largely under the radar: the Harvey Wallbanger, which combines vodka, orange juice and the Italian liqueur Galliano.

At the Charcoal Chef in Woodbury, Connecticut, the Harvey Wallbanger has been a fixture of the menu’s long list of classic cocktails for decades, according to night manager Tony Stahl. Opened in 1956, the restaurant caters to diners who have been going there for most of their lives, so Stahl has seen mostly older customers order the cocktail throughout his 12 years at the restaurant. But now, more 20- and 30-year-olds are noticing it on the menu.

“They’re trying it to experience something they’ve never heard of before that used to be drunk all the time,” he says.

Unlike other cocktails that were popular in that era, such as the Old Fashioned or Moscow Mule, the Harvey Wallbanger doesn’t have long-standing familiarity across generations of drinkers. Galliano distribution didn’t support a sustained interest in the cocktail, and drinkers started to explore other flavors, according to Francesco Lafranconi, vice president of beverage and hospitality culture at Carver Road Hospitality.

Still, when creating an ’80s-themed menu for Tipsy Flamingo in Salt Lake City, Lafranconi knew he had to put a version of the Harvey Wallbanger on the menu as a defining cocktail of the time.

The History of the Harvey Wallbanger

For years, the legend went that the drink was created in the 1950s and got its cheeky name from Tom Harvey, a California surfer who got drunk on the cocktail at a Los Angeles bar called Blackwatch Bar and banged his surfboard as he staggered out.

But after investigating the details of this story, author and The New York Times journalist Robert Simonson found that the bartender credited with creating the cocktail, Donato “Duke” Antone, also worked for Galliano and Smirnoff Vodka as a corporate mixologist.

Antone went on to create other drinks with the Italian liqueur, and his grandson told Simonson that the drink we call the Harvey Wallbanger was known as Duke’s Screwdriver at the Blackwatch. This has led people to believe that the surfer story, and character of Tom Harvey, was more a Galliano marketing ploy than cocktail canon.

We also now know, thanks to cocktail historian David Wondrich, that a famous cartoon of the surfer that helped boost the cocktail’s popularity in the 1970s was designed for Galliano by a commercial artist named Bill Young.

Beyond the story of its origins, the Harvey Wallbanger captures the simplicity of cocktail culture during that time period. With fewer spirits options to choose from, many drinks didn’t have more than three ingredients. Plus, there were other substances competing with alcohol that kept complex cocktail experimentation at bay.

“You were looking at an era, coming out of the ’60s and the ’70s, where drugs, LSD and other alternatives to alcohol became the most favorable party amenity, so to speak,” Lafranconi says. “So, alcoholic beverages in a mixed form didn’t really grow during the ’60s and the ’70s.”

Its straightforward recipe is what makes the Harvey Wallbanger special today, though one ingredient in particular helps it stand out.

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The Complexity of Galliano

Galliano L’Autentico is an Italian liqueur with an herbal, anise-kissed flavor and a vanilla, citrusy finish. Once you’ve tasted it, it’s hard to forget. And it’s hard to replicate.

“It’s a really fun thing to use in cocktails to turn them up a little bit—turn it up to 11, I would say,” says Kristina Ferdinand, general manager at Elemental Spirits Co. in Atlanta. “It’s like the little bit of glitter on top of a cocktail.”

Three classic cocktails helped the liqueur gain familiarity worldwide, according to Lafranconi: the Golden Dream, the Golden Cadillac and the Harvey Wallbanger. Today, bartenders like to sneak Galliano into drinks like daiquiris and white negronis to add another layer of depth, but there’s no cocktail where it’s classically front and center like the Harvey Wallbanger.
Galliano is to the Harvey Wallbanger what Campari is to the Negroni. “You can use Millefiori, you can use Yellow Chartreuse, but Galliano has a special uniqueness and taste profile that makes the drink,” Lafranconi says.

The Harvey Wallbanger vs. the Screwdriver

While the Harvey Wallbanger has only one more ingredient than a screwdriver, which is made with only vodka and orange juice, that one ingredient makes all the difference.

“This is more of a chorus line,” Stahl says. “It has much more depth to it. It’s bringing you those nuances that you wouldn’t have tasted before.”

With a screwdriver, the priority is the strength of your drink. With the Harvey Wallbanger, you’re drinking more for the complexity of flavors. And while vodka works well with many ingredients, to Ferdinand, its combination with orange juice and Galliano transforms the cocktail into something distinctly autumnal.

“I think that having that addition of something that’s very complex changes people’s perception of what they’re drinking,” she says. “Now they feel like they have something really special.”

Both Ferdinand and Lafranconi think the Harvey Wallbanger could have more mass appeal today with the help of some riffing. Make it a sparkling cocktail and it’s brunch-ready. Use another tart juice—like yuzu, calamansi or passion fruit—in place of orange juice and you have more playful flavors found on today’s menus. Even switching up the presentation could help rebrand the cocktail.

“If it wasn’t in a pint glass or a highball glass, and instead it was shaken in a martini glass or it was put over a large rock in a short rocks glass, I think that all of a sudden this cocktail feels current and more of the moment,” Ferdinand says. “I think the onus is on bartenders and bar managers to just go for it.”

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The Charcoal Chef’s Harvey Wallbanger

By Tony Stahl

4 ounces vodka
Orange juice
¼ ounce Galliano L’Autentico
Orange slice, for serving

Step 1

Add the vodka to a 16-ounce Collins glass filled with ice. Top with orange juice and float the Galliano. Garnish with an orange slice.

Photography by Dan Campbell

The Flamingo’s Harvey Wallbanger

By Francesco Lafranconi

1 ½ ounce vodka
4 ounces fresh orange juice (about 1 orange)
¼ ounce triple sec
½ ounce float of Licor 43 vanilla liqueur
2 mists of absinthe
Whole orange spiral and star anise pod, for serving

Step 1

Fill a 13-ounce pilsner glass with ice. Pour the orange juice into the glass. Add the vodka and triple sec and stir. Float the Licor 43 over the top and mist with absinthe. Garnish with orange spiral and star anise.