That '70s Cocktail: We Went Back in Time So You Don't Have To

The Florida bar scene has been shifting over the last few years, and honestly, it snuck up on me.

One by one, spots started opening that felt like they were pulled straight out of a decade most of us never actually lived through. Warm lighting. Vinyl on the walls. Bartenders who actually know what Galliano is and why it matters. Some of these places are chill and low-key, the kind where you sink into a booth and stay longer than you planned. Others are loud and high-energy, more Studio 54 than Sunday afternoon, with menus full of things your parents either drank or definitely should have.

But the drinks are all rooted in the 1970s.

If you're going to walk into one of these places and order something, which drink actually wins? Not just "most nostalgic" or "best name." The real winner. The one that holds up, tastes good, and still earns its spot on a menu in 2025.

To answer that, we have to go back.

The 1970s: A Decade That Deserved Better Cocktails (And Mostly Got Them Anyway)

Cocktail historians are not kind to this decade. One called it "the Death Valley of cocktail eras." The standard move was to take a solid spirit, drown it in sour mix, give the drink a dumb name, and call it a night. There's a whole family of cocktails from this era with names I can't print here that are essentially the same drink with different labels slapped on.

In between all that, some genuinely great drinks happened. Drinks that had real stories behind them, real chemistry in the glass, and enough staying power to show up on retro menus fifty years later.

The 70s were also the decade that changed how Americans drank. Disco wasn't just a music genre. It was a social revolution. The clubs that came out of New York and spread across the country were spaces where people who had never been allowed to be loud before got loud. Black culture, queer culture, immigrant communities, young women who had zero interest in sitting at home while their husbands went to "the bar" -- all of a sudden had somewhere to go.

And they needed something to hold.

The liquor industry was marketing vodka as the clean, modern spirit. Mixable with anything, no smell on your breath at the office. Orange juice showed up in half the drinks on the menu because it was cheap, familiar, and somehow made everything feel like it was fine to drink before noon.

Tequila was starting its American takeover. Rum was already at the party. Beer was splitting in two directions at once: the big national lagers dominating coolers from coast to coast while, quietly, a tiny brewery in San Francisco was about to change everything.

So let's go drink by drink.

The Drinks

The Harvey Wallbanger

We have to start here. This is the drink that more than any other is the 1970s.

The Harvey Wallbanger is a screwdriver with a float of Galliano on top. That's it. Vodka, orange juice, and a half-ounce of a tall yellow Italian liqueur that looks like it belongs in a cathedral. The drink blew up in the 1970s, almost entirely because McKesson Imports, the company that distributed Galliano in the US, ran one of the decade's wildest marketing campaigns.

The origin story involves a California surfer named Tom Harvey. After losing a surfing competition, the saddened surfer walked into a bar and ordered glass after glass of his favorite drink until he was bumping into walls on the way out. The bartender who served him was Donato "Duke" Antone, and that drink became the Harvey Wallbanger.

The real story is messier and more interesting. Duke Antone was a Hartford, Connecticut bartender who almost certainly had nothing to do with any California surfer named Tom Harvey, because there is no evidence that man ever existed. What Antone did have was a gift for building drinks around liqueurs and a relationship with the people marketing Galliano.

What actually happened was a campaign. In 1969, Galliano's marketing director commissioned a cartoon character, a sandal-wearing surfer, to promote the drink. The mascot's catchphrase was "Harvey Wallbanger is the name, and I can be made." Galliano sales tripled. The liqueur became the number one imported spirit in America.

Harvey got so famous that he received write-in votes during the 1972 presidential election. The drink was served on Amtrak trains. There were Harvey Wallbanger cakes sold at bakeries. People named their pets Harvey. The whole thing was completely unhinged in the best possible way.

Galliano itself is an Italian liqueur with an herbal, anise-kissed flavor and a vanilla, citrusy finish. Once you've tasted it, it's hard to forget. One bartender described it as "the little bit of glitter on top of a cocktail."

That's exactly right. The Wallbanger isn't a complicated drink. It's a screwdriver that went to Italy for a year and came back with better posture.

Make it:

• 2 oz vodka
• 4 oz fresh orange juice
• 1/2 oz Galliano

Build over ice in a highball glass. Pour the vodka and OJ first, stir to combine, then slowly float the Galliano over the back of a bar spoon so it sits on top. Orange wheel to garnish. Don't stir it again. The float is the whole point.

The Tequila Sunrise

The Rolling Stones were on tour in 1972. They called it the "Cocaine and Tequila Sunrise Tour," which is a sentence that tells you everything you need to know about that era of rock and roll.

Bartender Bobby Lozoff created the modern version of the Tequila Sunrise at the Trident in Sausalito, California. The Stones tried it there, loved it, and started requesting the ingredients at every tour stop so they could make them on the road.

The drink itself is almost absurdly simple, but it looks like a painting. You fill a glass with ice, add orange juice and tequila, then slowly pour grenadine over the back of a bar spoon. The heavy syrup sinks to the bottom and bleeds upward through the orange, creating a gradient that actually looks like a sunrise. Nobody tells you to do that. It just happens. Chemistry is cool.

Everything in the 70s was supposed to stand out, including what you were holding.

What people miss about the Tequila Sunrise: it's a legitimately good drink. The bitterness of the tequila against the sweetness of the grenadine and the brightness of the OJ is an actual well-constructed flavor profile. It's not just pretty.

Make it:

• 2 oz blanco tequila
• 4 oz fresh orange juice
• 1/2 oz grenadine

Fill a tall glass with ice. Pour the tequila and OJ and give it one stir. Then hold a bar spoon just above the surface and slowly pour the grenadine over it. Watch the sunrise happen. Orange slice and a cherry to finish. Don't touch it again until you hand it over.

The Pina Colada

This one has a dispute going and we're going to settle it.

The Caribe Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico claims that bartender Ramon "Monchito" Marrero created the pina colada in 1954. He was asked to create a drink that captured the essence of Puerto Rico and spent three months perfecting the recipe before he got it right.

A restaurant in Old San Juan called Barrachina has a plaque on the wall that says their bartender invented it in 1963. These two have been arguing about it for decades. The Caribe Hilton got an official proclamation from the Puerto Rican government in 2004, so we're going to call that one.

The drink exploded in North America through the 1970s and in 1978, Puerto Rico officially declared the pina colada its national drink. One year later, Rupert Holmes released "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" which became the last number-one Billboard hit of the entire decade. Nothing about that sentence is made up.

Joan Crawford, after tasting the original at the Caribe Hilton's Beachcomber Bar, declared it was "better than slapping Bette Davis in the face." That is the most 1970s sentence in history and I will not take questions.

The key ingredient that made mass production of this drink possible is Coco Lopez. Ramon Lopez Irizarry, an agricultural professor at the University of Puerto Rico, automated the labor-intensive process of extracting coconut cream and packaged it as Coco Lopez in 1954. Without it, the pina colada likely stays a hotel specialty and never goes global.

Make it:

• 2 oz white rum
• 2 oz pineapple juice
• 1 1/2 oz coconut cream (Coco Lopez)
• Handful of ice

Blend everything until smooth. Pour into a hurricane glass. Pineapple wedge and a cherry. Don't apologize for ordering this.

The White Russian

The White Russian existed before the 70s but nobody really cared. It was the decade of cream liqueurs and coffee spirits that turned it into a household name.

Kahlua was becoming a bar staple. Vodka was everywhere. And there were a lot of people at a lot of parties who wanted something that tasted like dessert but counted as a cocktail.

It's sweet, thick, and creamy. The decade leaned hard into indulgent, easy-drinking cocktails, and the White Russian fit right in.

It also had a second life in 1998 when The Big Lebowski came out, but that's a different blog post.

The White Russian is one of those drinks that people dismiss because it's rich and sweet and sounds like something you'd see at a chain restaurant. Those people are wrong. Made properly, with good vodka and fresh heavy cream floated on top instead of stirred in, it's actually a layered, complex drink. The coffee and vanilla of the Kahlua, the clean heat of the vodka, the cool fat of the cream. It works.

Make it:

• 2 oz vodka
• 1 oz Kahlua
• 1 oz heavy cream

Fill an old-fashioned glass with ice. Pour the vodka and Kahlua and stir once. Float the cream over the back of a bar spoon. Don't mix it. Let it bleed together as you drink it.

The Slow Comfortable Screw Up Against the Wall

Yes, this is a real drink. Yes, that is its real name.

The 1970s cocktail culture loved a double entendre. The Sloe Gin Fizz combined with the Screwdriver to create the Slow Screw, which then became the Slow Comfortable Screw (using Southern Comfort), which became the Slow Comfortable Screw Up Against the Wall when someone added Galliano to the equation.

That last one is basically a Harvey Wallbanger with gin and Southern Comfort swapped in. It tastes like a citrus bomb with a whiskey backbone and the kind of name you have to say with a straight face to the bartender.

We're including this one not because it's the best drink on the list but because it is the most 1970s drink on the list. This is what happens when an entire decade is feeling itself.

Make it:

• 1 oz sloe gin
• 1 oz dry gin
• 4 oz orange juice
• 1/2 oz Galliano (floated on top)

Build over ice. Float the Galliano. Say the name out loud when you order it. Own it.

The Beers

Coors Banquet: The Beer People Smuggled

Before Coors went national, it was only sold in about eleven western states. That's it. If you lived on the East Coast, you couldn't get it through normal means.

American beer drinkers lusted for Coors Banquet the same way modern craft beer fans dream about scoring rare cans. People would travel west, buy cases, and smuggle them back home. The going rate was sometimes four times the retail price.

Coors' popularity exploded in 1977 when it was featured in Smokey and the Bandit, the Burt Reynolds action comedy about a legendary trucker willing to risk everything to illegally haul Coors across state lines. A movie about beer smuggling became one of the biggest films of the year. That is peak 1970s.

Coors was also unpasteurized and required refrigerated trucks for transport, which the company used to build mystique. They were literally the craft beer of their era: regionally limited, allegedly more authentic, and coveted because you couldn't just go get one.

The beer itself is a clean, crisp golden lager. It doesn't blow you away. But that's the point. It's a perfect, no-nonsense beer that tastes exactly like what it is, and in the 1970s, having one meant you'd either lived in the West or knew someone who did.

Miller Lite: The Beer That Changed Everything

Miller didn't invent light beer. But it did pave the way for low-calorie, low-alcohol beers with its successful 1973 ad campaign targeting beefy, burly men, followed by a national launch in 1975.

The "Tastes Great, Less Filling" campaign was genius. They took a drink that could have been marketed as diet or light or low-cal and instead put it in the hands of retired NFL players arguing about it in bars. It was masculine. It was loud. And it worked.

Light beers now claim the top three spots for best-selling American beers. Every light beer you've ever held at a tailgate or a beach is downstream of what Miller did in 1975.

Miller Lite is not a special beer. It's just a beer. But it is the beer that accidentally restructured the entire American beer industry and you have to respect the legacy even if you're reaching past it for something else.

Schlitz: The Rise and the Fall

In the 1970s, Schlitz was known as "The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous." It was one of the largest beer producers in the country and a staple in bars and households nationwide.

And then they ruined it.

Faced with growing demand and pressure to cut costs, Schlitz changed its recipe in the early 1970s. They replaced malted barley with corn syrup, used high-temperature fermentation instead of the traditional method, and added cheaper extracts. The result was a beer that lost its flavor, spoiled faster, and rapidly lost public appeal.

Then, in an attempt to save the brand, Schlitz launched a 1977 television ad campaign where a voice tries to convince a Schlitz drinker to switch to a rival beer, and the Schlitz drinker responds with thinly veiled threats. The ad industry nicknamed it "Drink Schlitz or I'll kill you." Schlitz pulled the campaign after ten weeks.

From industry leader to punchline in about half a decade. There is a business school case study in there.

The original Schlitz formula has since been reconstructed from old documents and interviews, and the classic recipe beer does exist again. If you find it, try it. It tastes like a beer that used to mean something.

So Who Wins?

The Tequila Sunrise is beautiful. The Pina Colada has a better origin story. The White Russian has staying power. Coors Banquet has mystique. Schlitz has a cautionary tale arc that would make for a great documentary.

But the Harvey Wallbanger wins.

Every other drink on this list is something people kind of already knew. Rum, coconut, and pineapple. Tequila and OJ. Vodka and cream. These are combinations you can figure out on your own.

The Harvey Wallbanger is the one where someone had to tell you. You had to know about Galliano. You had to know to float it. You had to know about a surfer who may or may not have existed, a cartoon mascot with a catchy slogan, and a marketing campaign that turned a middling Italian liqueur into the top imported spirit in America.

It's the drink of a decade that genuinely believed you could market your way into people's hearts. And for a few years in the 1970s, you absolutely could.

The Wallbanger is not the best-made cocktail of the era. It's not the most sophisticated. But it is the most 1970s thing that ever happened to a glass, and when you order one at one of those retro bars and a bottle of Galliano appears from somewhere behind the bar and the bartender actually knows what to do with it, there's a moment where it all clicks.

Some drinks age badly. Some drinks just age.

The Harvey Wallbanger aged. And it's ready for its night out.