The Bushwacker: The Ultimate Florida Man Cocktail
A ridiculous yet satisfying mashup of the Piña Colada, the White Russian, and a boozy milkshake -- with a very Florida backstory.
I am a Florida man.
More specifically, I am a North Florida man. My family moved to the Florida panhandle around my ninth birthday.
What I did not realize at the time was that this would put me in close proximity to one of the funniest, and most bizarre, cocktail disputes of all time. That dispute was over a local drink called the Bushwacker, which is decadent, delicious, and relatively easy to make at home.
To understand this dispute — and the drink at its center — it helps to have a sense of the region where it gained fame and notoriety.
The Florida panhandle is arguably the most Florida of Florida places: It’s laid back, cantankerous, over-the-top, zany, kitschy, and populated with sunburnt weirdos wearing printed flower shirts. It’s the place that gave us Jaws 2, the current Jack Reacher, and that insane Taylor Swift song about Destin.
The modal panhandle resident is an engineer who dropped out of college and now works as a real estate agent and part-time bartender while surfing on weekday mornings and playing in a 90s cover band on the weekends. My people, I guess.
Culturally, it’s less Miami and more Alabama — but with military bases and a lot more coastline.
The beaches are the main attraction: The sand is really snow white, and the ocean really sparkles emerald green. Spend a few days on the beach, and you’re likely to see dolphins frolicking in the waves. Move to the area, and you might spot a pod of whales making their way through the bay as you drive over a bridge on your morning commute.1
The Florida panhandle attracts a certain sort of tourist, and a certain sort of beach bum whose primary goal in life is to spend as much time as possible hanging out on those beaches, doing as little as possible. There’s a reason the area is sometimes referred to as the Redneck Riviera.
As you might expect, there’s a lot of drinking — on the beach, off the beach, at home, on the side of the road, in cars (do not recommend), and, especially, in the many, many seafood shack-style bars and restaurants that dot the coast.
Inevitably, that means a lot of Miller Lite and tequila shots. But the area has its own cocktail culture too, and that culture reflects the region’s sensibility: It’s tropically inclined and tiki-influenced, but sillier, more absurd, more ridiculous, more over-the-top.
And no drink captures that sensibility better than the Bushwacker, a creamy, boozy combination of coffee, chocolate, and orange liqueurs, plus milk, cream of coconut, and a base of rum (or sometimes, unfortunately, vodka). You can think of it as a cross between a Pina Colada, a White Russian, and a milkshake.
I can sense some readers recoiling already: If you are a fusty Vieux Carre curmudgeon or a reads-Russian-novels-at-the-bar Fernet Guy — and hey, both are great life choices — you might be tempted to return to your stirred, boozy, and brown tipple of choice. Cocktails are serious business, and the goofy drink I’ve just described seems profoundly unserious.
Well, yes. The Bushwacker is a very silly drink. But that’s part of what makes it so enjoyable. With a little bit of care, and a modification or two, it is also quite tasty, especially on a hot summer evening, when consumed as a chilly liquid dessert.
Not every cocktail needs to be moody and brooding.
And if nothing else, its life story — which involves hurricanes, friendly cocaine rings, beachside music festivals, election-year shenanigans, and trademark disputes — captures something essential about the vibe and character of the place from which it came.
The Bushwacker is the most Florida of Florida cocktails. If Florida Man were a drink, he’d be a Bushwacker.
A Dog Named Bushwack
Okay, okay…the Bushwacker is not technically a Florida creation. But it gained fame and fortune on the white-sand beaches of Florida’s Gulf Coast. And in its complicated backstory, you can see a lot of the same sort of cocktail competition and development you still see in the world of high-end, non-ridiculous cocktails today.
The drink was concocted in the U.S. Virgin Islands during the 1970s, when Angie Conigliaro, a barkeep at the Ship’s Store in St. Thomas, threw a bunch of stuff in a blender with the goal of making a tropical, blended version of one of the decade’s signature cocktails, the White Russian. 2
Even then, during the dark ages of the cocktail scene, bartenders innovated, experimented, and played around with techniques and formats. And when they did, their goal was typically to make a newer, fresher version of something that people already liked and recognized.
After all, a signature drink could make or break a bar.