Good Ol’ Harv – The Harvey Wallbanger

Sunday was National Harvey Wallbanger Day. Did you miss the parade?
There are classic cocktails, and there are classic drinks. One of the latter is the Harvey Wallbanger. It has almost everything I think makes a great cocktail: a cool backstory, controversy about said backstory, a simple recipe with an exotic ingredient, and a wicked cool, evocative name.
We’ll start with that name, and its accompanying backstory. The story goes that three-time world champion bartender Donato “Duke” Antone invented the drink in 1952 in honor of, and for consumption by, champion surfer Tom Harvey. Harvey apparently liked to make the rounds of the shoreline bars after a hard day of carving waves, and usually hit Antone’s place to wrap things up. As you would expect, the trademark balance that made Harvey famous would desert him on the way out and he would frequently bang into the walls. Thus we have the Harvey Wallbanger.
The great thing about this story is that there is very little evidence to support any of it!
Antone could likely have come up with the Harvey Wallbanger. He is also credited with such cocktails as the Rusty Nail and the Godfather, so he was certainly no slouch as a mixologist. But the first real instance of the above story doesn’t appear until the 1970’s… in Galliano’s corporate advertising. Supposed champion surfer Tom Harvey seems to exist only in stories about the creation of his namesake. There is even disagreement over how many “world championships” Duke Antone won. I can’t find any mention of the actual championships he won, and I wonder what kind of bartending world championships they were giving out in the Sixties and Seventies.
None of this makes the story any less fun to relate, so I suggest you file it under “too good to check” and resume your regularly scheduled imbibing and story-telling. If you have actual evidence of any of this, please let me know! The Wikipedia entry for the Harvey Wallbanger claims that there is a biopic in the works about Duke Antone, but take that with the usual pinch of salt for things sourced there as there is no page for such a project anywhere on IMDB, nor a citation on the Wikipedia entry.

The recipe for a Harvey Wallbanger is as follows:
HARVEY WALLBANGER

• 3 parts Vodka
• 1 part Galliano
• 6 parts Orange Juice

Combine in a small highball with large cube ice. Garnish with half an orange wheel and a maraschino cherry (optional).

The exotic ingredient in Ol’ Harv is Galliano. Galliano is an Italian liqueur with a distinct flavor of vanilla, a flavor that is even more prevalent when employed in a Harvey Wallbanger. Galliano has one of the most distinctive bottles in all of liquordom, a bottle that I have discovered is also a huge pain in the keister to store.

It won’t fit in any of my liquor cabinets, even the one I set up to accommodate over-tall bottles.
What’s that? Yes. Yes, I do have a lot of places to store liquor. I have a lot of liquor to store.
But the fiendishly clever folks who make Galliano designed a bottle so tall that it can only be stored out in the open for all to see, which is why you actually see it in every bar you enter, including (now) the one in my basement. There is no way this was an accident.
Finally, there is the name itself. How cool is “Harvey Wallbanger”? It sounds fun. It’s a double entendre. A World Series team even appropriated it back in the eighties. It’s retro. Merely ordering one in a loud voice will likely start a conversation.
What’s more to love?

Oh yeah. I did leave something out.
How does the thing taste?
Although it was invented in the Fifties, the Harvey Wallbanger really came into its own as a hugely popular drink in the Seventies. That’s a warning sign, folks. The cocktail scene of the Seventies was, shall we say, not the finest hour in the storied history of cocktails. The drinks that became popular back then had sweet, muddled flavor profiles that did everything they could to hide the character of the underlying spirit. Gin was damn near extinct as a popular ingredient. Whiskey was for squares. And a darkness was upon the land….
Frankly, a Harvey Wallbanger tastes like a sweet screwdriver made with vanilla vodka. True to the Seventies ethic, all the character of the Galliano is stripped away, and vodka isn’t supposed to have any to begin with. This is the distinction I made between a cocktail and a drink.
A Harvey Wallbanger has little of the complexity, or the potency we associate today with a fine cocktail. But it is actually a pretty tasty drink. You can certainly get one wherever you may find yourself in need of refreshment, even in the most down-at-the-heels dive bar. And even this guy could make you a good one. Wine list offers nothing that tickles your fancy to go with your mozzarella sticks and potato skins? Give Ol’ Have a call.

Tagged as: duke antone, Galliano, harvey wallbanger, seventies, tom harvey, vodka