You go out to a bar, and despite cocktails having a revival, you have to wonder, what cocktails didn’t make the cut. Do trendy cocktails of the past taste good to the palates of today?
Many people are making cocktail videos on YouTube, but Greg from the channel How To Drink revived cocktails from different eras. In this collection of recipes, the 70s hit back hard with some drinks very few people see.
The six cocktails he made and reviewed had fun names — the Godfather, Harvey Wallbanger, Midori Sour, Tequila Sunrise, Pink Squirrel, and Golden Cadillac, yet as you watch the video you learn that the fun stops at the names.
Greg notes that unlike popular cocktails today, which use a standard base of hard liquor, many of the cocktails rely on sweet liquors as the primary liquor and only have a small ratio of tequila or vodka.
There are definitely some weird liquors in these recipes, like Galliano (an herb and vanilla liqueur) or Midori (a green melon liqueur).
These cocktails aren’t subtle in color or flavor. The bright green color of the Midori Sour has the palatable taste of sour battery acid, and the fennel and orange juice combo of the Harvey Wallbanger is aggressively off-putting.
On the other end of the spectrum, the remainder of the cocktails are sweet. Greg ranks the Tequila Sunrise as the best cocktail of this 70s lineup, but he says its front notes are more orange juice and grenadine than anything else.
The others are more desserts than they are cocktails. Ingredients like amaretto, or the even sweeter, Creme De Noyaux give notes of “melted Halloween candy” flavor. Creme de White Cocoa and heavy cream make for a sweet, melted ice cream quality to these saccharine, post-dinner drinks. Are these bad characteristics? Depends on the person, but it’s hard to imagine that you could drink more than a glass without getting queasy.
Do you think you’d try any of these cocktails? Are there any cocktails you remember drinking in the 70s?