Screwdriver

There is much lore surrounding the cocktail known as the screwdriver. In one story, American oilmen in the Middle East concocted the drink from vodka and canned orange juice, calling it a screwdriver after the one tool on their belts appropriate for use as a stirring stick. The Norwegians—especially the makers of Finlandia vodka—claim that the screwdriver was first concocted in Norwegian oil fields, not the Middle East. Ian Wisniewski and Nicholas Faith in Classic Vodka state that a gin drink commonly known as the orange blossom became the first screwdriver during Prohibition, when bootleggers added canned orange juice to bathtub gin to mask its awful flavor. A screwdriver was needed to pierce the orange juice cans, hence the cocktail’s name.