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.

When I first volunteered to write up the Macadamia Nut Chi-Chi, I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into. As it turns out, despite many hours of research and consulting some people who know a thing or two about tiki, no one really knows anything about the Chi-Chi. A light, frothy, sweet blender concoction, the Chi-Chi (or Chee Chee, as Trader Vic had it) is essentially a piña colada made with vodka. Though I have learned much about the famed and now-defunct Chi Chi club in Palm Springs, that turned out to be a dead end insofar as any written record of the Chi-Chi cocktail goes. Both Trader Vic and Donn the Beachcomber had recipes for it, but it appears that no one took the credit.

So, being that there isn’t a flashy story to spice this drink up, we turn to something useful: making pineapple juice. Being consumed with researching, I did not realize that I was completely out of pineapple juice. Fortunately I had a fresh pineapple to put into service, so if you follow along with the pictures you too can make some fresh jugo de piña at home.

First, you need to choose a pineapple.

The easiest way to do so is to grab one of the smaller green leaves at the center of the pineapple’s crown and pull. A ripe pineapple will easily yield one of the leaves, telling you that it is ready to eat.

Next, using a sharp knife trim off the pineapple crown and bottom. Pineapples have a slight dimple in the bottom, sort of like an apple. You want to trim off enough that the entire bottom of the pineapple is flush.

Now that your pineapple will stand up on its own, set it on its end and trim off the skin, cutting in long sections down the length of the fruit. (If you have supremed citrus fruit before, this is the same principle as removing the rind and pith.) Continue doing this all the way around until you have removed all the skin. You will be left with some small brown eyes embedded in the flesh—try to cut off as many of these as possible.

Next, you will trim the flesh away from the core of the pineapple in four cuts. Cut parallel to the core, which will leave you with a roughly rectangular piece of pineapple. Turn the fruit and make another cut, which will leave you with a slightly smaller rectangle on the second and third cuts. Finally, make the same cut on the last remaining piece of flesh, which will be about half the size of the first. You should now have four “filets” of pineapple and the woody core, which you can discard.

Trim the four hunks of pineapple into ½” chunks and place them in a blender with ¼ – ½ cup of water. Blend on high speed until all of the chunks are reduced to a thick puree. You may have to do this in batches to blend all the fruit, depending on how large your pineapple was.

Pour your puree into a fine mesh strainer set over a bowl and allow it to drain. If you’re so inclined, you can use a spatula to force juice through the mesh. It should take between thirty minutes and an hour for your puree to release all its juice.

Once you have a strainer full of pulp that is no longer yielding juice when you stir it, you’re ready to decant the juice and start mixing drinks!

Macadamia Nut Chi-Chi
8 oz unsweetened pineapple juice
2 oz coconut cream (Coco Lopez)
4 oz vodka
2½ oz macadamia nut liqueur

Add all ingredients to a blender; fill with ice. Blend until slushy. Serves two to four. If macadamia nuts aren’t your thing, you can simply omit the liqueur and you will have a traditional Chi-Chi.

Driving along through this or that neighborhood, you spot something on the sidewalk.  A lemonade stand.  Manned by couple of kids.  Me, I always stop.

There’s not much that’s more refreshing than a nice, tall glass of lemonade on a hot summer day.  It’s easy peasy to make, too — water, sugar and lemons.

And what’s better than lemonade?  Grown-up lemonade with booze in it!  (We’ll get back to that in a bit.)

You know how to make lemonade, right?  I would imagine that you do, but let’s assume that your mom always made it for you, and that hers was so good and so perfect that you never really got around to making any for yourself.  It really couldn’t be easier, but as with most drinks it helps to have a method. Before you start squeezing, though, here are some tips to maximize your juice output.

1. Don’t use lemons right out of the fridge.  Cold lemons yield less juice.

2. Even better than using room temperature lemons is putting your lemons in a hot water bath for several minutes.

3. Roll your lemons under the palm of your hand on the cutting board before squeezing.  This helps to liberate the juice.

4. Oh, and don’t pay 79¢ each for your lemons at a major chain supermarket.  I see these prices and it makes me want to yell at someone.  If you can, find a small, local, mom-and-pop produce market or Latin or other ethnic supermarket, where the lemons will likely be a more reasonable 99¢ a pound.

Better yet, plant a lemon tree in your yard, and then they’ll be free. (My favorite price!)

Free lemons from your backyard!

I also recommend straining the fresh-squeezed juice.  You don’t want seeds, of course, and lemon pulp tends to adhere to the glassware and makes it more difficult to clean.

I like to press some lemon zest (only the yellow zest, not the white pith) with a muddler to extract the lemon oils too, which gives an extra depth of flavor.  This is an optional step if, like me, you occasionally are afflicted with laziness. A sharp vegetable peeler is ideal for removing the zest.

SIMPLE, PERFECT LEMONADE

1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
3/4 to 1 cup rich (2:1) simple syrup, to taste
Zest of 1 lemon
3 cups water or sparkling water

Combine the juice and syrup in a pitcher.  Add the zest and press with your biggest muddler, getting as much oil out as you can.  Add the water (or a bit more) to taste, depending on how concentrated you like it.

See? Easy peasy. (But you knew that.)

Now let’s have a go at making a single serving of lemonade.  Get a nice tall glass.  Fill it with ice, preferably nice big cubes.  Add an ounce of lemon juice and 3/4 ounce of simple syrup (as above, a whole ounce if you like it sweeter).  Fill it with fizzy water and you have a lovely, summery fizzy lemonade, but … hmm.  This also sounds like … wait a minute, it’s missing something … oh yeah!  Two ounces of gin.  (London dry, Plymouth or Old Tom, like the drink’s namesake.)  Then that glass of fizzy lemonade becomes a Tom Collins.  Well, heck-ola.  Now it’s a cocktail!  (Hold that thought.)

Let’s start playing around with this basic lemonade.  I’ve been attending the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans for many years, and perhaps the single tastiest and most refreshing beverage on the entire Fair Grounds is Strawberry Lemonade.  The weather tends to be hot and humid, and this drink is bright, sweet, tart, fruity and oh-so-wonderful.  As you’ll notice, the technique is very similar to what I described above.   I never managed to get the exact recipe from the folks who make it at Jazzfest but again, it’s pretty easy stuff and yields spectacular results.   Here’s Emeril Lagasse’s recipe (the man knows New Orleans).

STRAWBERRY LEMONADE

2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 tablespoon finely chopped lemon zest
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 pint strawberries, hulled and halved
2 cups cold water or sparkling water

Bring the water and sugar to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and stir until the sugar is dissolved.  Add the zest and juice, stir the mixture and remove from heat.  Let cool, then strain into a pitcher.

Puree the strawberries in a blender then add to the pitcher with the lemon juice mixture.  Stir to combine and chill thoroughly.

To serve, add the water or sparkling water and stir well.  Pour over ice into tall glasses and garnish with a whole strawberry and a mint sprig.

Did I say that there’s not much that’s better than lemonade?  Well, one of those things would be strawberry lemonade.  Now … think about adding a shot of reposado tequila to that.  Limonada por mi Amante, anyone?  Use this as a launching point — you can use raspberries, blackberries or pretty much any fruit that tastes good with lemons (which would be almost all of them).  Also, that aforementioned Tom Collins?  Instead of building it in the Collins glass start it out in a mixing glass, throw in a few raspberries, muddle them with the gin, lemon juice and simple, then double-strain that into your ice-filled Collins glass and fill with soda.  Nice berry garnish.  Ta-daa!  Raspberry Collins.  Or any other Somethingberry Collins you care to make.  So simple, but believe me, your guests will rave about it.

Let’s take another direction — instead of adding fruit, let’s start experimenting with the syrup.  For another dimension of flavor, try making a lemongrass syrup instead of simple.  Take a cup of water and a cup of sugar (two if you want it rich), plus two sliced lemongrass stalks (center only), bruised slightly.  Bring to a simmer for 10 minutes, then let cool.  Strain and bottle — it’s helpful to add a splash of vodka as a preservative.  Make your lemonade with this as the sweetener, maybe muddling a few kaffir lime leaves or some Thai basil or cilantro, and you’ve got some nicely exotic southeast Asian flavors going too.  (The syrup also makes delicious iced tea sweetener, an idea I stole from Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, NC.)

I suspect you see where we’re going with this.  By taking a basic lemonade recipe, varying it by adding booze and/or fruit and/or flavored sugar syrups, you have a range of cocktail before you that’s limited only by your imagination, and what’s in season.

Here’s one I really like — sophisticated, herbal, floral, yummy.

LAVENDER LEMONADE

1-1/2 ounces Plymouth gin.
1 ounce lavender syrup (see below).
1 to 1-1/2 ounces lemon juice (to taste, as to your tartness preference).
Sparkling water.

In a tall Collins glass filled with ice cubes, build first three ingredients, add fizzy water and stir.  Garnish with a sprig of fresh lavender if you have it, a lemon slice if you don’t.

To make the lavender syrup bring 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar and the zest of one lemon to a boil, then lower to a simmer and stir to dissolve sugar.  Remove from heat, then add 1/2 cup lavender blossoms.  Let steep overnight, then strain and bottle.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that this is basically a Tom Collins, but with a flavored syrup instead of muddled fruit.  Try a syrup with basil, lemon verbena, thyme … go to the herb section of your local farmer’s market and go nuts.

Now let’s do something unusual with the basic lemonade recipe.  I came across this a while back and although I don’t make it as often as I’d like (due to my aforementioned lazy bastardness), it is filled with deliciousness and in its way reminds me of the beloved sno-balls I grew up with in New Orleans, thanks to a Secret Ingredient.

In Brazil they take a different approach toward making lemonade, whizzing together not only juice but skin and even pith.  (Plus, there’s that Secret Ingredient.)  Brazilian lemons are also quite a lot like limes, so for this recipe we’ll be using the largest limes we can find.  I usually have an easy time finding them in local Latin or other ethnic markets or supermarkets; otherwise use one-and-a-half to two smaller limes for one big one.

BRAZILIAN LEMONADE

4 large or 6-8 small limes
1 cup simple syrup
5 cups cold water
3 ounces sweetened condensed milk (i.e., The Secret Ingredient)

Unless you have a really huge blender, you’ll need do this first step in two batches as described.

Wash the limes well.  Trim the ends off the limes, then cut into eighths.

Place half of the limes, simple syrup and water into the blender and give it five one-second pulses. Pour into a large fine-mesh strainer over a pitcher and strain the mixture, stirring and pressing with a wooden spoon to squeeze all the liquid out of the resulting pulp.  (Discard the pulp.)  Repeat wtih the other half.

Add the sweetened condensed milk, and serve in tall glasses over ice.

Now … add a jigger of good cachaça or white rum to that.  Oba!

You can also make your lemonades into more complex cocktails by adding more ingredients, such as liqueurs or bitters.  Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh, who is a not-so-mild-mannered graphic designer for movies when he’s not in his not-so-secret identity as our planet’s pre-eminent cocktail archaeologist, has created a number of superb cocktails in his day.  One of these was in honor of the author Daniel Handler, specifically in his guise as Lemony Snicket, creator of the series of children’s books A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Doc was the graphic designer on the film version of the first couple of books, and created the Lemony Snicket Cocktail using gin, lemon juice, limoncello and yellow Chartreuse.  While cogitating over my lemonade article, I thought this powerful but tasty cocktail might make a nice lemonade-based tall drink too.

THE FIZZY SNICKET, or THE SNICKETY FIZZ
(unfortunately adapted by Chuck from Ted’s original)

1-1/2 ounces Beefeater gin.
1 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1/2 ounce limoncello.
1/2 ounce yellow Chartreuse.
1/4 ounce simple syrup (optional, if you like it sweeter).
Sparkling water.

Build in a Collins glass over ice, adding the soda last.  Give it a brief stir and garnish with a shrunken head, or a lemon slice if the former is not handy.

(By the way, to make Ted’s original Lemony Snicket cocktail, up the gin to 2-1/2 ounces, lower the lemon juice to 1/2 ounce and omit the simple and fizzy water.  Garnish with a curly lemon twist.)

I think by now you’ve got a good idea where you can go with this, which is almost anywhere.  Before we finish I’ll toss out one more lemonade (actually, technically a limeade) that I came up with a few years ago, with two slightly different versions.

SCHMILSSON

2 ounces white rum or cachaça.
1 ounce fresh lime juice.
3/4 ounce rich Demerara syrup.
2-3 dashes Angostura bitters.
3 ounces coconut water.

Build in a Collins glass over ice and stir.

Or, if you don’t have coconut water handy …

NILSSON FIZZ

2 ounces white rum or cachaça.
1 ounce fresh lime juice.
1 ounce coconut syrup.
2-3 dashes Angostura bitters.
Sparkling water.

Build first four ingredients in a Collins glass over ice, top with fizzy water and stir.

If only they made sparkling coconut water.  I’m tempted by put some into my soda siphon and charge it up and see how that works, using the first recipe, and then we’d have just one Nilsson Fizz.  Both of these drinks are named for that great singer and songwriter who put de lime in de coconut and drank ‘em both up.  (It relieve de bellyache.)

Enjoy!  And have a bitchin’ summer!

Some of the best ideas seem ridiculous on their face. A destination resort in the middle of a miserably hot desert? Put sleeves on a blanket to keep warm while reading? Salty Caramel Ice Cream? Really? OK, the middle one is pretty silly, but you get my point. Lots of things will make you laugh when you first hear them, but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t good ideas.

Take, for example, sweet tea-infused vodka. If anything sounds like a misbegotten, trendy mess, vodka and sweet tea would be it. My initial guess, after hearing of the product, was that it was a new tertiary product like Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

But at 70 proof, sweet tea vodka is pretty much a full strength spirit. It’s suitable for mixing, doesn’t need to be refrigerated, and will keep after opening.

And none of that would matter a bit, if it weren’t also brilliant. I bought a bottle on a lark, after a recommendation of my friend Andy. In addition to being a pain in the ass at the poker table, Andy is something of a vodka expert, since he… um… drinks a lot of vodka. He was raving about the stuff the last time we played. I was in a generous mood, having hit my second diamond royal flush of the night, so I patted him on the head and said I’d try it. I’m glad I did.

There are three brands available in Ohio: Firefly, Jeremiah Weed, and Sweet Carolina. All were reasonably priced (Sweet Carolina is the cheapest), so I looked closer. Jeremiah Weed is made in Connecticut. Sweet Carolina is made in Maine. And Firefly is made in South Carolina. My previous post about brewing fresh sweet tea included some rather pointed criticisms of yankee habits regarding sweetening tea, so you should be unsurprised that I looked askance at the Weed and Carolina.

Firefly is produced at a vineyard in South Carolina, and even uses tea grown on what I think is the only tea plantation in the United States today. They use real cane sugar, instead of HFCS, as well. The base vodka (distilled four times) is very acceptably smooth. In Ohio, I can’t get the straight vodka that Firefly makes, but I’m guessing that it’s pretty good too, given what I taste (or more accurately don’t taste) in the bottle I’m drinking now.

We are not talking multi-national lab-made spirits here, folks.

So seriously,
It’s actually good?

Yes. Yes it is. First off, remove the cap and give it a whiff. It smells delicious. Not interesting, complex, beautiful, or such adjectives, but actively appetizing. With only the gentlest of handling, the taste lives up to the aroma.

The simplest way to appreciate this stuff is to simply pour a couple of fingers in an old fashioned glass and fill with ice. Give it a good long stir to start the melt and garnish with a lemon wedge or sprig of mint, whichever floats your boat. What you have is one fine sip.

Now, my cocktail snob buddies out there may have a hard time imagining me serving up a drink which is prepared thus: Pour over ice. If you must have a fancy dan, make it fit for Vessel or Pegu Club, way of serving, try the following. You want your ice to dilute fast at first, then very slowly. I suggest you first put a little crushed ice, or the tiny cubes from an ice maker, in the bottom and pour in your Firefly. Stir well, then add big, cold cubes from the freezer. Your guests will feel that you went to some trouble for them, and the drink is both ready to drink sooner, and may be sipped more slowly.

A second way of serving Firefly, which I got from of all places the New York Times, is this:

• 1 part Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka
• 1 part fresh lemonade

Serve in a highball glass with lots of ice and a mint leaf.

It is also delicious.

Hey!
What’s the name? You forgot the name.

Name? Oh yeah. It’s a John Daly… you know, an alcoholic Arnold Palmer.

…!

I do have a quibble with what Firefly, and their yankee competitors, call this stuff. I get impatient with all the infused vodkas out there to begin with. The whole point of vodka is its taste neutrality and purity, after all. With the sweet tea vodka, I think we should probably consider it what it really is, a liqueur in its own right. What is a liqueur anyway, but neutral spirits buoying and preserving herbs or fruits with sugars? Firefly is only missing a secret recipe and a religious order to make it. But this stuff is good enough to outlive any current faddishness, so maybe in a century, the religious order will spring up.

They said it would never happen, a TDN centered on vodka. But Oval laid down the challenge, and the fine mixologists of the Mixoloseum brought their best ideas to the chat room. Below are the top five drinks of the night. Vote now for your favorite!

Perfumed Beauty

• 4 oz vodka
• 0.5 oz sloe gin
• 0.5 oz lime juice
• 1.5 oz simple syrup
• 1 large wedge pineapple
• 3 mint sprigs
• 2 dashes angostura bitters
• 0.25 tsp ground cardamom

Rim snifter with cardamom mixed with simple syrup, then muddle a large wedge of pineapple with three mint sprigs, 2 dashes angostura bitters, 1/4 tsp ground cardamom and then fill glass crushed ice. Separately shake remaining ingredients, pour into glass, garnish with a bunch of mint sprigs and a lime wedge.

Cortez’s Black Flower

• 2 oz Oval vodka
• 1 oz grapefruit juice
• 0.5 oz vanilla syrup
• 2 dashes rhubarb bitters
• 1 dash celery bitters
• 4oz Ting

Shake all but Ting and pour into glass filled with crushed ice, top with Ting.

Pi*a*b

• 1 oz Oval vodka
• 1 oz Tequila blanco
• 0.5 oz lemon juice
• 5 oz simple syrup
• 0.25oz St.Germain
• 0.25oz Licor43
• Basil
• 2 oz tonic water

muddle basil with simple syrup, add rest of ingredients except tonic and shake. Strain into collins glass and top with tonic

Finnish Summer

• 2 oz Oval vodka
• 6 caraway seeds
• 2 cardamom pods
• 1 orange slice
• Ting to top

Muddle caraway seeds, cardamom pods, and orange slice. Add vodka and ice, then shake and strain into glass. Top with Ting

Black Negue

• 1.5 oz Oval vodka
• 1 oz Zirbenz Pine Liqueur
• 1 oz Carpano Antica
• 0.25oz simple syrup
• 1 dash aromatic bitters

Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a rosemary sprig

Polls are only open through Monday, so vote now!