Vesper

The Vesper, a tasty yet completely unnecessary cocktail, appears in Ian Fleming's novel Casino Royale when ordered by the book's main character, James Bond. Bond has just met his CIA counterpart, and, on the way to a casino, they stop for a drink and a meal. Our protagonist first orders a dry Martini, then reconsiders. "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." When his companion questions the order, Bond explains, "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..." Packed within those few lines of prose are over fifty years of debate and complaint, yet everything is ideally suited for 1953.

In later books, Fleming would wander through cocktail trends, as would the movies that followed. More so in the movies. The Vesper only appears in the first of many works, replaced later by Vodka Martinis and even later by leisure suit crayon drinks, those wonderful garish vodka-fueled buckets of kitsch so popular in the seventies. In Casino Royale, however, Bond drank gin.

Let's begin with the matter that gets so many worked up and burdened with opinions. The Vesper, in the book, is shaken. So much speculation detailing conspiracy-level reasons with visions of secret agent subterfuge surrounds this drink, and the slightly relevant point in a novel no one reads makes it sound silly. In the early and mid-twentieth century, shaking drinks was standard. They were all shaken, and a shaken Martini was just trendy. As we would learn from later books and movies, Bond is relatively modern in leisure and appearance, so asking for a Martini in the style of the time is perfectly normal.

Bond likes his cocktails big. Another aspect of early twentieth-century cocktails is that they are small. Powerful, indeed, but small. Fleming is not the first to deride minuscule proportions, other authors of the time were equally critical and thirsty, but the Vesper seems out of whack in the other direction. While it does foreshadow the ten-ounce Martinis of the nineties, it remains a reaction to the standard of the time, but how big is it?

Consider the proportions. Fleming's recipe is in "measures," which is not ounces. Order a Vesper at any bar today, and you will get an inappropriate amount of alcohol. Thinking of measures as parts gives you a more reasonable drink based on ratio, not specific volume; however, this still isn't correct. A measure, no longer used as a unit of volume and now forgotten, could have been understood in Fleming's time as 25ml, slightly less than an ounce, which is approximately 30ml. When mixed using the metric specifications of the book, you still get a big drink, but not as big as if using ounces. Now the Vesper starts to make sense in terms of quantity.

So the Vesper is large, it's shaken, and, wait, Kina Lillet? Another point of discussion, but before we consider the aromatized wine, there is the subject of gin. Gordon's was the London dry gin of choice in the fictional moment when Bond ordered a Vesper with his CIA companion.

Gordon's was founded in 1769 by Alexander Gordon, and with reason. It was the gin craze or a gin craze, there was more than one, but the gin parlors needed sauce. At the time, it would have been old tom gin, sweetened and sometimes aged, sipped neat at shady establishments across England. Over time, this evolved into the London dry gin we know today, and by 1900 or so, Gordon's had become Gordon's Dry Gin.

In time, Gordon's became synonymous with London dry gin. It's what you ordered, and business was good. However, they were not alone. There were other gin producers, and, also by 1900, Gordon's had merged with Tanqueray. Nevertheless, Gordon's was still the flagship product despite the merger and would have been the traditional juniper-forward, sharply focused gin we think of when we think of London dry gin.

Today that gin is Tanqueray, Gordon's being capped at 40% ABV and sold on the budget shelf, but in the time of Casino Royale, the opposite was true. If making a Vesper today, Tanqueray is likely a closer choice to what Gordon's would have been then. The punch of Juniper in either offering, coupled with a higher ABV, would have been a tall order in a dry Martini. Enter vodka.

In the aftermath of World War II, vodka was an exotic and stylish spirit suitable for the jet set, the high-born, and all who aspired to fashion and sophistication. It was THE trend in a world of cocktails just learning how versatile this clear, odorless spirit can be. Without modern, approachable gin like Bombay Sapphire, adding a little vodka to gin would soften the juniper punch. So don't use Bombay Sapphire in a Vesper. The vodka will cover the delicacy, but a gin like Gordon's, or Tanqueray, has little delicacy to smother.

What vodka would have been in Fleming's Vesper? We don't know, but it would not have been Smirnoff, then the popular name brand vodka. Bond gets a little snobbish with the bartender when pointing out that a grain vodka would be better than a potato vodka, but it's a quibble. The bartender, of course, brushes the thirsty agent aside with a quip of his own. The implication is that any vodka will do, and, indeed, any good vodka will do.

What will not do is vermouth. Instead, the Vesper calls for Kina Lillet, an aromatized wine known as quinquina or kina-kina. Quinquina gets its name from quinine, a bitter extract of cinchona bark most notably used in tonic water. In a gin and tonic, gin makes the bitter quinine palatable. Quinine adds a distinctly flavored bitterness to quinquina, giving Kina Lillet its name.

Unfortunately, however, Kina Lillet no longer exists. In 1985, the once-popular quinquina rebranded as Lillet Blanc and gained sweetness as it lost bitterness. Gone from Lillet Blanc is the quinine. Brand reps from Lillet claim the recipe is the same, but marketing is sometimes untrustworthy. Anyone who's ever tasted tonic water knows what quinine tastes like, and if there is quinine in Lillet Blanc, there's not much of it. Will Lillet Blanc work in a Vesper? Sure, but it won't be the same. Common knowledge claims Cocchi Americano is a good sidestep from Kina Lillet, but who would know? Someone who remembers tasting Kina Lillet in the old days? Quinquina is still a thing, and there are good brands out there if you can find them, so try one and see if you like it.

Is the Vesper, then, a Martini? Yes and no, kinda sorta. It is gin, and/or vodka, and vermouth(ish). That makes it a Martini, and there is modern precedent in recipes calling for blanc vermouth, a style between dry and sweet, in place of dry vermouth. It's also garnished with a lemon peel, something gone for a while but now as common as an olive. Should you order a Vesper in a bar? No. Should you make one at home? Yes, if you like stirred gin drinks. Really though, modern gin is better, modern vodka is smoother, and modern vermouth is abundant and delicious. In Fleming's time, some of that was true. Vodka helped tame the gin, and a small amount of wine helped balance it. The evolution and expansion of the spirits market and advances in production make the Vesper a cocktail of its time, not ours. Yet it's always there, in the popular culture, for the wrong reasons. It serves the novel in character development. It tells us something about Bond, whom we first meet in Casino Royal, and it tells us something about what Bond will be. He's not yet the suave, confident secret agent we know from the films. Casino Royale is the story of how he becomes that agent, and the Vesper is merely a detail, as is his clothing, Bentley, and skill at the tables. The Vodka Martini of later stories is much more suited to a modern cocktail menu. However, the Vesper can still be a delicious drink, even if it's outdated and unnecessary.