Shaken or stirred: The story behind James Bond’s martini

James Bond is perhaps the best-known ambassador of the martini. (Illustration by Suneesh K)

As cocktails go, none has been immortalized in the way that the martini has. All thanks to James Bond. While the history of cocktails itself can be traced back to the British tradition of a punch – spirits, juices, and spices mixed in a bowl – the martini is a relatively recent invention dating back to the late 19th century.

While the precise origins of the drink remain unclear, one origin story traces the roots of the martini to a cocktail invented in the town of Martinez California in the 1860s. The drink was a combination of gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino liqueur, and orange bitters. It took the name of its birth town and came to be called Martinez.

A few decades later, when an Italian company called Martini & Rossi produced dry vermouth, which was less sweet, it became a key ingredient in the classic dry martini that we know today. It was this cocktail that became the epitome of sophistication in the Prohibition Era of the 1920s.

Inventing the Vesper Martini

James Bond is perhaps the best-known ambassador of the martini. Thanks to the 1953 book Casino Royale, we know the recipe to 007’s favourite cocktail: three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, and half a measure of Kina Lillet, shaken ‘until it’s ice-cold’ with a large thin slice of lemon peel.

Bond invents it, seemingly off the top of his hat, at a poker table.

Later in the book, he names it the Vesper, after Vesper Lynd, his doomed love interest. Interestingly, it remains the only time that Bond orders the drink. The Vesper doesn’t find a mention anywhere in any of the books that follow. It has been suggested that Vesper’s death is the reason why Bond never orders the drink again. In any case, an iconic cocktail – Vesper Martini – was born.

Shaken or stirred

Depends on who you ask, there is indeed a right way to have the martini. We know that Bond prefers his martini shaken not stirred. It has earned him the ire of several purists.

Stirring a martini doesn’t just prevent the chipping of the ice, it also ensures a stronger drink. Shaking, on the other hand, will dilute your drink. Some might even argue that it basically gives you cold water with a dash of alcohol.

But ordering a weak martini could well have been Bond’s strategy. He was, after all, a spy and a weaker drink would mean he wouldn’t have to hold back and still manage to stay sharp.

The more reasonable explanation for his preference, however, could be traced back to the preferences of his creator. By all accounts, Ian Fleming believed that stirring would diminish the flavour and preferred his martini with gin and vermouth. In fact, it is said that Fleming loved his gin so much he would finish off a bottle a day.

Even though, Fleming loved his martinis, he absolutely hated the Vesper.

The real-world origins of the Vesper Martini

Vesper Martini (photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Just as we are not sure of the origins of martini, we don’t exactly know how The Vesper was invented.

We do know that the cocktail itself was not a figment of Fleming’s imagination. One account suggests that it was devised by his friend, the author Ivar Bryce. We know this because Bryce received his copy of Casino Royale as a gift from Ian Fleming, with the following inscription: “For Ivar, who mixed the first Vesper and said the good word.”

Another one credits the invention of the Vesper to a bartender called Gilberto Preti who was known for creating great five-sip martinis at Dukes in London. The story suggests that Fleming came across the drink during one of his several trips to the bar and simply inserted it in the book.

Either way, we can say with great amount of certainty that Fleming had never tasted the Vesper Martini before immortalizing it in Casino Royale. He made this revelation in a 1958 letter to the Guardian saying that the first time he tasted a Vesper was several months after he wrote about it in the novel. And that he found it “unpalatable”.

The key ingredient in the making of the Vesper is Kina Lillet, which is a liqueur made with white wine, mixed with fruit liqueurs, and flavoured with quinine. It gets its name from the main ingredient: quinine - the bark of the cinchona tree. Kina Lillet was discontinued by 1989 and was replaced by Lillet Blanc, a sweeter variant with less quinine. Neither was very widely distributed and hence remained somewhat difficult to find.

And so, even though the Vesper Martini remains an iconic drink, it never caught on like the vodka martini, or the mojito, two of Bond’s other favourites.