Ten years ago, Thad Vogler was deep in research on apple brandy cocktails. He was about to open the French brandy–focused bar Trou Normand on the heels of his success with his other San Francisco bar, Bar Agricole, and he was searching old books for applejack drinks that he could plug Calvados into. Then he found something that was perfect for the program: the Hawaiian, an applejack sour with green Chartreuse and pineapple. At least, he thinks he did. Recently, he tried to find the exact source of this apple brandy Hawaiian, searching through the old cocktail books in his storage unit, but came up short. He wishes he’d kept better records. “Either I just, in a grayout, slid [the Chartreuse] in at some point,” says Vogler, “or it’s in a book somewhere.”
To be clear, this Hawaiian is not the famous gin drink of the same name from The Savoy Cocktail Book, nor is it the orgeat-laced Royal Hawaiian. There are a slew of related drinks from the 20th century, including Harry Johnson’s Brandy Fix circa 1900, which calls for green Chartreuse and pineapple syrup. Then there’s the Applejack Sour from 1941’s Here’s How, which gets applejack, lemon and pineapple. The Hawaiian Brandy Cocktail, the Hawaiian Room and the Hawaiian #2 all feature some combination of apple brandy (sometimes with other spirits added, like the Hawaiian Room’s rum), lemon, pineapple, and, often, an imported liqueur such as Curaçao or maraschino. Later decades saw the popularization of green Chartreuse, lime and pineapple as a modern-tropical triumvirate. (See: a 1970s party drink, the Swampwater, and a 21st-century classic, the Chartreuse Swizzle.)
Regardless of the apple brandy Hawaiian’s precise origins, Vogler has been making his version for over a decade. He’s currently featuring it on the Bar Agricole pop-up menu at Quince in San Francisco—a dream collaboration for Vogler heralding Bar Agricole’s reopening at its new Mission District location in July. For Vogler, the Hawaiian is a natural choice for the special menu because it is so emblematic of Bar Agricole’s ethos. “[The Hawaiian] has a real nice vintage, historic feel to it,” he says. “Those are our two main aesthetics: historicity, and, on the level of recipe, a kind of austerity, simplicity.”
Vogler’s elemental Hawaiian recipe calls for three parts Calvados to one part each of Chartreuse, lime and pineapple gum syrup. This isn’t an over-the-top pebble ice tiki drink; rather, it’s true to Bar Agricole’s Milk & Honey–inspired recipe structure, which Vogler calls “tight little flavor machines.” The sour is shaken, double-strained into a coupe and left unadorned. “I’ve never been a big fan of garnish,” says Vogler.
Though he’s reached for various Calvados expressions over the years, Vogler says the pop-up at three-Michelin-starred Quince allowed him to use an older Calvados than he would typically use. He opted for Lemorton Reserve, which delivers a touch of vanilla and is made with 70 percent pear and 30 percent apple, a ratio that’s mirrored in the unusual Chartreuse in the drink.
Chartreuse’s limited-release Tau Tarragona—a bottling meant to honor the period when Chartreuse was produced in Tarragona, in Catalonia—is a blend of roughly 70 percent yellow Chartreuse to 30 percent green. Pre-pandemic, Vogler typically would have reached for green Chartreuse (which, to his recollection, is in that once-again-lost vintage recipe), but he’s also used yellow at times. With the Tau expression, he gets the best of both worlds: the yellow’s honey and saffron along with the oomph and big herb flavor of the green.
Rather than using the pineapple juice called for in many of the Hawaiian’s early analogues, Vogler opts for a traditional pineapple gum syrup. The syrup delivers the fruit’s flavor, but also gives the drink a pleasing viscosity, contributing to its velvety texture. Lime juice unseats lemon in Vogler’s version, giving the drink a sharper acidity and more tropical vibe.
Whether or not the Hawaiian is genuinely a vintage drink or some combination of an old drink and the Chartreuse fever that’s swirled around us this last quarter-century is hard to say. But it’s proven to have an appeal that goes beyond the need for authenticity, plus it looks like a vintage cocktail and tastes like one, too—and it’s just good. “It’s a lush wall of sound of a drink,” says Vogler, “and it’s super canonical in that it has stuff from around the world colliding in a single glass.”
