March Drink of the Month - Harvey's Firecracker

Sometimes, the best riffs are the simplest ones. Take something that is already good on its own and add one ingredient to pump up the flavor. That is what we did down in the bar laboratory last month, seeking to improve on a classic: The Harvey Wallbanger. A simple combination of vodka, orange juice, and Galliano (an anise-flavored liqueur with strong vanilla notes, making it much sweeter than its cousins Pernod and Sambuca). Frequent collaborator and friend of the bar Zack and I took that simple mix and played around for a bit, resulting in our cocktail for the month.

Before we dive in to the drink, who is Harvey Wallbanger you may ask? Well, according to historian David Wonderich, he was probably just made up to help sell Galliano. The many stories around the drink's inception were revealed to be fictional, the work of advertising executives who wanted to tap into the "California cool" vibes of the 60s in order to sell more bottles of the key ingredient. Those executives took the classic Screwdriver (vodka and OJ) and added in their new product. The resulting concoction adds some sweetness and some bitter, making the drink a little more complex.

The Harvey Wallbanger was one of the first drinks I learned how to make when I took an online bartending class. The class was a joke, and the key learning for the series seemed to be teaching prospective mixologists how to build complicated drinks with naughty names. A Screwdriver in a highball glass becomes as "long screw." Add some sloe gin, and it is a "sloe, long screw." Add some Galliano (making it a Harvey Wallbanger with a sloe gin float) and you have a "sloe, long screw up against a wall." Southern Comfort makes it a comfortable screw, and so on. Apparently this bartending class has a dirty mind, but this was the language for call drinks before the cocktail revolution.

I suppose if you were to categorize the drink Zack and I came up with, you could call it a "fiery screw up against the wall." We added one of citrus' best friends, jalapeno. The spice of the jalapeno mixes well with the orange juice, and adds another note to the anise/vanilla. Adding jalapeno gives you citrus/spice and sweet/spice combos, which are both delicious. We simply subbed 0.25 oz of vodka for the jalapeno spirit (a little goes a long way), and went to town. When it came time to name the drink, I asked Zack to use Google translate to convert "Wallbanger" into Spanish. He put "wall" and "banger" in separately and came up with "pared petardo." Which is funny. But I was curious what "petardo" really meant - surely there is not a Spanish word that just means "banger." It turns out "petardo" is firecracker, which rolls of the tongue nicely. So we settled on Harvey's Firecracker, the recipe for which you can find below:

In a mixing tin, combine the following:

1.25 oz vodka
3 oz fresh orange juice
0.5 oz Galliano
0.25 oz Jalapeno liquor*

Shake over ice, strain into a cocktail glass, with an orange peel garnish.

*We used Journeyman Humdinger Jalapeno, but any spicy spirit will work

I hope you enjoy your Harvey's Firecracker! Up Against a Wall or otherwise!