8 November: Harvey Wallbangers

Today is National Harvey Wallbanger Day. Here are ten things you didn’t know about Harvey Wallbangers.

1. What is a Harvey Wallbanger, anyway? 3 parts vodka, 1 part Galliano and 6 parts Orange juice, served in a highball glass.

2. Yes, it’s a variant of the screwdriver. In fact, was originally known as the Italian Screwdriver.

3. Galliano is a sweet herbal liqueur produced in Italy. It’s full title is Liquore Galliano L'Autentico, and it was created by Tuscan distiller and brandy producer Arturo Vaccari in 1896. He named it after Giuseppe Galliano, an Italian officer of the Royal Italian Army of the First Italo-Ethiopian War. The flavour is described as “sweet with Vanilla-anise flavour and subtle citrus and woody herbal undernotes.”

4. The Harvey Wallbanger was created in 1969 as a marketing campaign by McKesson Imports Company, importer of Galliano, to promote their product. It certainly worked. Sales of Galliano quadrupled as the Harvey Wallbanger became an extremely popular drink in the 1970s.

5. The 1970s ad campaign featured a slightly worse for wear surfer dude designed by graphic artist William J. "Bill" Young, with the slogan, "Harvey Wallbanger is the name and I can be made!"

6. It’s not entirely clear if it was based on a real person, but the story, which may or may not be true, goes as follows. A Surfer by the name of Tom Harvey (who may or may not have really existed) lost a competition and went on a bender to drown his sorrows. His tipple of choice happened to be a mixture of vodka, orange juice and Galliano. After several of these, he started walking into furniture and bumping into walls, hence Harvey Wallbanger.

7. The recipe is credited to one Donato "Duke" Antone, of Hartford, Connecticut, a champion mixologist and head of a bartending school. He’s said to have come up with the Rusty Nail and the White Russian as well. Unlike Tom Harvey the inebriated surfer, there is actual evidence that Antone existed. He died In 1992 at the age of 75, and much of what is known about him comes from his obituary. He was the brother-in-law of one-term New York State Senator Carlo Lanzillotti; he managed his childhood friend, featherweight boxer Willie Pep; and in appearance is described as “a short, balding man with thick, black-framed glasses.”

8. There was a campaign at one point to make Harvey Wallbanger a candidate in the 1972 U.S. Presidential Elections. Well, let’s face it, he’d do a better job than Trump.

9. There was a band called Harvey and The Wallbangers in the 1980s. Its line up was Jeremy Taylor, Christopher Prurves, Johnny Griffiths, Neil "Reg" McArthur, Richard Allen and Harvey Brough. In addition the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers Major League Baseball team were nicknamed “Harvey’s Wallbangers,” in honour of their manager that season, Harvey Kuenn.

10. Harvey Wallbanger cake was a thing back then, too. The recipe calls for a box of yellow cake mix, the ingredients of the cocktail and a box of vanilla pudding, baked in a Bundt cake pan. Like the drink itself, the cake is thought to have originated in around 1972 for marketing reasons. It was promoting, not only the cocktail but Sunbeam frying pans.