Drinking in James Bond

There’s more to Bond-san than a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred.

The latest episode of ‘Intoxicating History’ has just gone out and it looks at a perennially popular topic: drink in the James Bond Novels and films. So I’m posting a beefed up version of something I wrote a while back on this subject.

A study of drinking in the Ian Fleming novels calculated that in one book You Only Live Twice he drank 132 units in one week – that’s almost ten times the amount recommended by the British Medical Association of 14 units per week. It works at about 60 glasses of wine. Bond also smoked around 70 cigarettes a day – not recommended. He also did lots of other dangerous stuff which I wouldn’t recommend either.

The thing to bear in mind with all the drinking, womanising and the relentless connoisseurship was the background to the books. Bond is a reaction against austerity Britain. Casino Royale was published in 1953 when there was still rationing in Britain. They appeal to the fantasies of those who have been without for too long. Readers could travel vicariously through Bond to at a time when most people hadn’t been abroad, except to fight in the war. Until the 1970s there were strict rules on how much currency you could take out of the country. Moonraker published in 1955 shows how many luxury goods were simply unavailable in England at the time.

“The wine-waiter was pleased. ‘If I may suggest it, sir, the Dom Perignon ’46. I understand that France only sells it for dollars, sir, so you don’t often see it in London. I believe it was a gift from the Regency Club in New York, sir. I have some on ice at the moment.’”

Cocktails

Bond was really a spirits man more than anything else especially in cocktail form, the best way of getting lots of alcohol into your bloodstream quickly. This reflects Fleming’s own background. He was an Edwardian, born in 1908, and would have grown up in pre-war London when cocktails were served in so-called American bars like the ones at The Savoy or Bucks, a new club which opened in 1919.

The vodka martini is the ultimate Bond drink. When the books came out in the 1950s, vodka was quite exotic in Britain and America, and would have marked Bond down as a man of taste. In Dr No (1958), he says: “I would like a medium Vodka dry Martini— with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred, please. I would prefer Russian or Polish vodka.” In the films “shaken, not stirred” became Bond’s catchphrase. But if you talk to most bartenders, they say that you should never shake a Martini because it dilutes it too much and makes it cloudy.

So why does Bond order it like this? There are various theories. The first is that Fleming didn’t know what he was talking about, or that Bond was making sure he wasn’t completely intoxicated by having a slightly more dilute drink. The study in the British Medical Journal asks, humorously, “were James Bond’s drinks shaken because of alcohol induced tremor?”

Last year I finally got round to making a Martini a la Bond after watching Casino Royale, and, once I’d got over the cloudiness from the fine ice particles, it’s actually a delicious drink: very very cold from the shaking, a little more dilute than the stirred version. Perhaps Bond was on to something.

Fleming invented his own take on the martini called the vesper after Vesper Lynd in the first Bond novel Casino Royale (1953). Fleming writers:

“Bond insisted on ordering Leiter’s Haig-and-Haig ‘on the rocks’ and then he looked carefully at the barman. ‘A dry martini,’ he said. ‘One. In a deep champagne goblet. 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?’”

Now there’s a man who knows what he wants. Sadly Kina Lillet was discontinued in 1986, original bottles are like gold dust only more expensive. Most bartenders recommend Cocchi Americano, an aromatised wine made with cinchona bark, instead. Funnily enough Fleming himself seems to have gone off his own recipe, describing it as “unpalatable” after trying it again.

For times when Bond wants something lighter, there’s always the americano. This is made from equal parts Campari and sweet vermouth served with ice and a spritz of soda water. It gets its name from its popularity with American tourists to Italy in the ‘50s.

It crops up in quite a few Bond books including the short story ‘From a View to a Kill’ where Bond recommends drinking it in hot weather where one of his more usual drinks like a vodka martini would be too strong. It’s a great drink for when you really want a negroni but plan to get some work done/ bump off a Smersh agent in the afternoon.

Red wine with sole, there’s something fishy here

Whisky and other spirits

Bond proves himself a monumental drink bore in the Goldfinger film (1964) when enjoying an after dinner cognac with M. He comments: “I’d say it’s a thirty-year-old fine, indifferently blended . . . with an overdose of bon bois.” M responds testilly “Colonel Smithers is giving the lecture, Bond.”

In the books, Bond is an enthusiastic drinker of a whisky & soda. His brand of choice is Black & White, a blended Scotch originally produced by James Buchanan & Co Ltd, it’s now a rather unloved part of the Diageo stable.

In later films with a firm eye on product placement Bond has become a single malt drinker. During the Pierce Brosman era, he drank Talisker but for the Daniel Craig films he’s very much a Macallan man. Even using it in a bizarre drinking game involving scorpions in Skyfall (2012). Again, not recommended. Later in the film, the evil villain Silva, played by Javier Bardem, offers Bond a Macallan 1962 50 year Old. Show off. I’m always a bit surprised that Macallan thought that having its fine single malts treated in this way was good publicity, but what do I know?

Bond is also a keen American whiskey enthusiast. In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (published in 1963), Bond pours himself “a stiff Jack Daniel’s sour mash bourbon on the rocks and added some water.” Jack Daniel’s also crops up in the Pierce Brosnan film Goldeneye (1995) while in Goldfinger, Sean Connery enjoys a “bourbon and branchwater” with the eponymous villain and Pussy Galore. Well, he is in Kentucky. I learned while recording the podcast that branchwater refers to water from the same source as that used to make the whiskey. Sean Connery would go on to do adverts for Jim Beam bourbon which also appears in the hugely underrated Timothy Dalton Bond film The Living Daylights (1987).

He also drinks Suntory Japanese whisky in You Only Live Twice before boring everybody senseless by explaining the correct temperature to serve sake. As an aside it’s interesting that Roald Dahl wrote the script for the film because he has served with Fleming in naval intelligence during the war.

Champagne

Bond’s next favourite drink is champagne. If you watch the Roger Moore films from the 1970s and ‘80s, he drinks a lot more champagne than cocktails as befits the smoothest man to have ever walked the face of the earth. There’s an awful lot of champagne drinking in Fleming’s novels too. In Casino Royale, Bond describes a 1943 Taittinger Blanc de Blancs as “probably the finest champagne in the world.”

But the two brands most associated with Bond are Dom Perignon and Bollinger. In the film of Goldfinger, Sean Connery says: “there are some things that just aren’t done, such as drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!” Here Bond is not only wrong about the Beatles but about the temperature to serve champagne. That’s around three degrees Celsius, just above freezing, far too cold to appreciate such a great wine.

Bollinger first appears in Live and Let Die (1973) but its most notable appearance in a Bond film occurs in Moonraker (1979). Roger Moore visits Dr Goodhead (geddit?) in her hotel room in Venice. Noting a bottle of Bollinger in the ice bucket, he quips: “If it is the 69, you were expecting me.” As I said, none smoother.

Other wines

While Bond is very much a champagne and spirits man, as befits someone of Fleming’s generation, there are some wines in the books such as Château Mouton Rothschild and Piesporter Goldtropfchen from the Mosel in Goldfinger. It's not all fine wines though. In Live and Let Die, published in 1954, Bond drinks Liebfraumilch. In other words, Blue Nun!

A bottle of Chianti plays a pivotal role in the film of From Russia with Love (1963). Bond is on the Orient Express with Grant, a Smersh operative masquerading as a British agent, played by Robert Shaw and suspects that there’s something not quite kosher about him. The suit is a little too tight on Grant’s muscular physique, in fact there’s more than a little Daniel Craig about him. Bond’s fears are confirmed when Grant orders a bottle of Chianti with his fish! Clearly a wrong ‘un.

Bond’s wine knowledge comes to the rescue again in Diamonds are Forever (1971), surely the craziest of all the Bond films. He’s in his cabin on board a ship with his squeeze Tiffany Case played by Jill St. John when two stewards (same sex assasin couple Mr Wint and Mr Kidd) bring in a lavish meal complete with Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1955. Bond comments after tasting the wine:

“For such a grand meal I had rather expected a claret”

Mr Wint replies: “Of course, unfortunately our cellars are rather poorly stocked with claRET”.

Quick as a flash Bond says: “Mouton Rothschild is a claret”.

Then all hell breaks loose.

And finally Château Angélus, an extremely expensive St. Emilion features prominently in some of the Daniel Craig films. In Casino Royale, Bond enjoys a bottle with Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) on a train to Montenegro. There’s clearly something about wine, women, and trains for Bond.

That’s it! I hope you enjoy the podcast. Let me know what you think.

A shorter version of this article appeared on the Master of Malt blog.