Crime Fiction Dossier

Worlds Collide: James Bond and the Vesper Martini

Perhaps no one in thriller literature, or literature in general, is as associated with the Martini as James Bond. With just three short words he launched countless thousands of Martini drinkers off into the arms of Bacchus: "shaken, not stirred. James Bond book series is not as popular as movies, but you can check or even buy book reports from our site to learn more about the topic in question." Ian Fleming’s creation history is long and complex.

I won't go into why this is the wrong way to prepare a Martini -- actually, I will: briefly, it spoils the crystalline purity that is one the drink's sublime pleasures -- nor will I offer a diatribe on how Bond convinced so many drinkers that a Martini should be made with vodka instead of gin. (Something akin to making cookies with peanut butter and calling them chocolate chip.)

No, the purpose of today's post is to discuss something that Bond -- actually his creator, Ian Fleming -- did right: he created a new drink.*

Here is the relevant passage, from Casino Royale (1953), the novel that introduced 007. Bond walks up to a bar, accompanied by his CIA contact, Felix Leiter, and orders a drink:

"A dry martini," [Bond] said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."

 "Oui, monsieur."

 "Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?"

Bond called the drink the Vesper, after the book's love interest, the beautiful double agent, Vesper Lynd.

It's basically a Dry Martini with vodka substituted for some of the gin in order to mellow out the flavor a little. Kina Lillet, used instead of vermouth, was a French aperitif flavored with cinchona bark (quinine), giving it a slightly bitter taste, but leaving it still a little sweeter than the typical dry vermouth.

All in all, a tasty way to make a Martini. Sadly, Bond never drank it again. The book does not end well for Vesper Lynd -- it never does for Bond's ladies, does it? -- and he discarded the drink along with her memory.

Here is the recipe:

 

The Vesper Martini

Shake with ice:

3 oz gin
1 oz vodka
1/2 oz Lillet Blanc

Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Add a lemon twist for the garnish.

 

Bond liked his cocktails on the large size (see below), so this will make a hefty drink. You can adjust the quantities if you'd like. Just keep the ratios the same.

For the gin, I recommend a strong-flavored London Dry, like Tanqueray. This will approximate the flavor of the British Gordon's gin of Bond's time. (A different animal from the Gordon's sold in the U.S. today.)

For the vodka, Bond preferred Russian or Polish, but distillied from grain, not potatoes. So you might use Stolichnaya or Sobieski. (In the movies Bond usually drank Smirnoff, but that's because Heublein paid the studio a lot of money for product placement.)

For the Lillet, it gets more complicated. The Kina Lillet that Bond requested is no longer available. The company now makes an aperitif called Lillet Blanc, which is similar, but doesn't have the quinine (and thus the bitterness) of the original. The drink will still have the same basic flavor profile, but it will be slightly different.

One possible substitute, first proposed by Jason Wilson, is to use Cocchi Americano instead. Cocchi Americano is a French aperitif wine akin to Lillet Blanc, but flavored with gentian root, giving it a similar bitter flavor to the original Kina Littlet. I have not tried this combination, but it sounds promising.

Regardless of how you choose to prepare your Martini, I will leave you with one final piece of advice, also related by Monsieur Bond in Casino Royale:

"I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad."

Sound advice from a man who knows.

*According to Dale Degroff, the recipe was actually created for Fleming by Gilberto Preti, who tended bar at Dukes Hotel in London. Ted Haigh, however, says this is doubtful.

Worlds Collide: Raymond Chandler and the Gimlet

I recently started a website called Professor Cocktail that covers another passion of mine: fine spirits and cocktails. I've been writing a series of posts over there called "Worlds Collide" that deals with the intersection of my two major pursuits, namely crime fiction and spirits. I'm going to start cross-posting those essays here.

Raymond Chandler, one of the great American writers of all-time and one of the two finest practitioners of the classic hardboiled detective novel, is best known for his immortal creation, Philip Marlowe. The Los Angeles private eye appeared in several novels and solved many cases. But perhaps his greatest achievement lay in the spirituous realm, for Marlowe (and Chandler) gets credit for helping to popularize a classic cocktail: the Gimlet.

The Gimlet is reputed to have been invented by Sir Thomas D. Gimlette, a surgeon who served in the Royal Navy around the turn of the 20th century. He supposedly created a drink made from gin mixed with lime-juice cordial as a way of inducing sailors to consume Vitamin C, and the cocktail eventually took his name. (This story is quite possibly not true, but it's a good story.)

Despite its antiscorbutic properties,  the Gimlet failed to catch on in the United States, where the Martini and the Manhattan still held sway. That began to change, allegedly, when Raymond Chandler, one of the most popular authors of his time, introduced his readers to the Gimlet in the pages of The Long Goodbye (1953).

Early in the novel, Philip Marlowe meets up with Terry Lennox, an alcoholic British ex-pat, in a bar called Victor's. The pair get to talking and begin to bond over several rounds of cocktails. Marlowe recalled:

We sat in the corner bar at Victor’s and drank gimlets. “They don’t know how to make them here,” [Lennox] said. “What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.”

There's no doubt that the Gimlet is a fine cocktail -- a true classic that any bartender worth his salt can make, and many drinkers will enjoy. And Lennox is right that a Gimlet must be made with Rose's Lime Juice. If it's made with anything else, it just isn't a Gimlet.

But those proportions! That's enough Rose's to make a fish pucker, and drown the gin like a medievil witch. So here's a recipe for a Gimlet that's a little more palatable. It still has more Rose's than most recipes you'll find, but we're mixing it in honor of Marlowe.

 

Gimlet

2 oz. Gin (Plymouth Gin is a good choice)
1 oz. Rose's Lime Juice

Shake (or stir if you'd rather) with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime wedge.

 

Nothing could be simpler. The bartender at Victor's eventually buys a bottle of Rose's so that he can make Marlowe a Gimlet. But by that point Lennox is gone and the detective has lost his taste for them.

That won't stop us, however, for mixing up a cocktail and raising a glass in honor of one of the finest writers who ever lived.

Cheers, Mr. Chandler!