Easily the smartest thing ever written about Ian Fleming’s famous fictional superspy was a compact treatise by Kingsley Amis called The James Bond Dossier. In it, the author of Lucky Jim brings close literary analysis to bear in an effort to understand why “that damned elusive 007” captures the imagination not only of pulp fiction fans but of sophisticates too.
There are the cars the man drives — even though they make no sense. Long before Bond got behind the wheel of the glam silver Aston Martin with machine-gun headlights, Fleming had him roaring around London in a 4 1/2 liter “Blower” Bentley, a massive racing roadster. It seems that secrecy didn’t mean the spy-about-town had to be inconspicuous.
Amis notes an obvious characteristic: Bond is good at games. Especially when he’s up against a game that is rigged. And working from rather the same principle (one that is as much a matter of aesthetics as ethics), Bond knows a villain when he sees one — when he sees one cheat, that is. Auric Goldfinger isn’t the essential Bond villain because he’s willing to kill indiscriminately with poison gas but because he has the audacity to cheat at both cards and golf.
But these are peripheral descriptors. Bond may be associated with a car or two, but they rarely last long enough for him to enjoy them. And few are the Bond fans who get to indulge in 007 playacting by, for example, having their shirts made on Jermyn Street.
It is in his drinking, by contrast, that Fleming gave Bond fans the opportunity to live the (short) life of a 00-whatever. Most notable are the vodka martinis that Smirnoff paid the Bond movie producers to have Sean Connery consume. It was in the first of the novels that Bond has the uncharacteristic urge to play bartender, inventing a cocktail to impress a girl. That drink, the Vesper, is rather simple, a variation on a martini. It consists of 3 parts gin to 1 part vodka and 1/2 part Kina Lillet.
Which is a problem. Being both a scholar of the Bond oeuvre and of strong drink, Kingsley Amis denounced the Vesper. He wouldn’t even try it: “Kina Lillet is, or was, the name of a wine apéritif flavored, I’m assured, with quinine and not at all nice,” Amis wrote in his Bond dossier. “I’ve never drunk it myself and don’t intend to, especially as part of a Martini.”
My own tastes regarding the Vesper have changed — I was bothered not so much by the Lillet as by the vodka. But I have since come to dislike Lillet, which has over the years become ever sweeter, ever more syrupy. The flavored wine has dropped the designation “kina” as it has dropped the ingredient — cinchona bark — that had once kept Lillet from being overly sweet.
Happily, importers have been bringing into the United States a greater variety of the cinchona-flavored aperitif wines known as “kinas” or “quinquinas.” Some are good on their own or with a little fizzy water, such as the peach-flavored aperitif from Provence, Rinquinquin. But that peachiness makes for a lousy Vesper.
Are there other quinquinas that make for a proper Vesper? From Switzerland, there is a very bitter quinquina called Kina L’Aero d’Or. Just as Lillet is too sweet, L’Aero d’Or is too bitter. Whatever will Baby Bear have to drink in Goldilocks’s absence?
And that’s where Cap Corse comes in. A perfectly balanced bitter-sweet aperitif wine from Corsica, it doesn’t have the cloyingly syrupy sweetness of Lillet, nor the domineering flavor of L’Aero d’Or.
So, let’s see if we might have a new, streamlined Vesper. Start with a traditional London dry gin and forget the vodka, which is unnecessary and only serves to encourage the vodka trade. Combine 3 ounces of the gin to 1/2 oz Cap Corse quinquina. I would normally stir such a drink, but I will bow to the obligatory shaking — at least as long as the shaking is vigorous enough to make the cocktail bracingly cold.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
