galliano — The Cocktails — Beyond Reproach

1.5 ounce Galliano
1.5 ounce crème de cacao
1.5 ounce heavy cream*

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake until frosty and stain into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass.

*NOTE: You can used coconut cream in place of heavy cream in the same proportion if desired.

The Golden Cadillac (or sometimes just Gold Cadillac) calls for Galliano which is a sweet Italian liqueur flavored with anise, herbs, and vanilla. This sweet and creamy cocktail was invented at a roadside bar in El Dorado, California called Poor Red’s BBQ. According to Poor Red’s website, they invented the cocktail in 1952 when a newly engaged couple came in to celebrate their engagement. They asked bartender Frank Klein to create a special cocktail just for them that would match their brand-new purchased gold-colored Cadillac parked outside. He tried a few things and eventually decided on this sweet creamy cocktail shaken until frothy. He decided to serve them their cocktail in two different glasses, a champagne coupe glass to signify its celebratory nature for her, and a more manly and masculine sidecar glass for him. To this day, when you order a Golden Cadillac at Poor Red’s, they serve it to you in two glasses.

Poor Red’s became famous for the drink throughout the 50s, and eventually Galliano noticed how high sales had climbed in Northern California, and decided to find out what was going on. They eventually ran an advertising campaign with a Golden Cadillac recipe from 1964 to 1967. From there, the drink became famous around the world.

Side note, if you’re not a dairy fan, you can still drink a Golden Cadillac. In the 1970s a bar in the East Village started selling them made with Coconut Cream instead of Heavy Cream, and their version became so popular that many recipes online today call for coconut cream.

1.5 oz Vodka
4 oz Orange juice
.5 oz Galliano

Combine vodka and orange juice in a glass filled with ice and stir. Pour the Galliano over a barspoon held over the top of the glass so that it floats on top of the drink. Garnish with an orange slice.

Made with vodka, orange juice, and a splash of Galliano (a sweet, herbal, vanilla flavored Italian liqueur), essentially a Harvey Wallbanger is just a gussied up screwdriver.

The most common origin story you’ll find when looking for the history of the Harvey Wallbanger is that a Bartender named Donato “Duke” Antone created it in the early 1950s at his Blackwatch Bar on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Supposedly a local surfer and bar regular named Tom Harvey came into the bar after losing a surfing competition and asked for his favorite cocktail that Duke made. After getting a little drunk, he supposedly started venting about losing the competition and eventually started banging his head against the wall in frustration. Some stories just say he got so drunk he banged into the wall, but either way, Harvey. Wall. Banger. The end.

From there the cocktail puttered along until sometime in the 1960s when a marketing director for a liquor importer came up with a tagline and a cartoon for the cocktail in an attempt to boost Galliano sales. By the 70s it was one of the most popular cocktails in the country.

However, there are a few problems with this story. First of all, a surfer from Manhattan beach going all the way to Sunset Boulevard for a fancy screwdriver is hard to believe. Also, cocktail historians haven’t been able to find any written record of a competition surfer named Tom Harvey.

Not only that, but Antone is also supposedly responsible for creating a bunch of other well-known cocktails like the Rusty Nail, the White Russian, the Kamakazi, and the Freddie Fudpucker; and some people say he was actually taking credit for cocktails he didn’t actually create himself. While he was quoted many times in newspapers about some of his most famous drinks, he never even mentioned the Harvey Wallbanger in print until the early 1970s, some 20 years after he supposedly invented it.

Also, in addition to owning the Blackwatch bar in Hollywood, Antone also worked for both Galliano and Smirnoff Vodka as a corporate mixologist. So, the more likely story is that there never was a real surfer, it was just a story concocted by a marketing department to go along with a cocktail that a corporate mixologist either created himself or stole from another bartender.

Either way, by the end of 1969 the cartoon mascot for the Harvey Wallbanger was everywhere. On pop art posters, bumper stickers, buttons, t-shirts, and mugs. According to David Wondrich, with the Harvey mascot “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.”

Thanks to this ad campaign, Galliano became the number one most imported liqueur in the 70s, exporting 500,000 cases a year to the U.S.