We chose to use Citadelle dry gin from France to craft ours. We recommend using your favorite dry gin when you craft a Vesper Martini at home. Gin We used this bottle of Citadelle gin to craft our Vesper Martini. It’s no top secret that this is the best approach for achieving cocktail success. Instead, we say to use your favorite gin. It’s an obvious move since Kina Lillet, which used “quinine liqueur made of cinchona bark from Peru,” is now defunct. Our recipe has two variations from the original Vesper cocktail recipe.įirst, we’ve replaced Kina Lillet with Lillet Blanc.

Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel.” We shook this Vesper Martini just like Ian Fleming specified. In fact, Fleming, who named the drink after original bond girl Vesper Lynd, spelled it out clearly as “Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. The recipe for the Vesper Martini is no top secret affair. Not only did he introduce the world to James Bond in Casino Royale, but he also introduced a new cocktail – the Vesper Martini. Ian Fleming created history in his very first novel. History of The Vesper Martini The Vesper Martini became a covert cocktail in 1953 when Ian Fleming published Casino Royale. Today, however, bartenders craft Vespers with Lillet Blanc instead of Kina Lillet. However, the Vesper Martini a/k/a the James Bond Martini lives on to fight the good fight one sip at a time. Lillet Blanc has replaced the Kina Lillet used in Ian Fleming’s original Vesper Martini recipe. He also probably didn’t know that one of the cocktail’s three ingredients would have a shorter shelf life that his books. While we never met Ian Fleming (the author), we suspect that he wasn’t intending to create mixology magic when James Bond (his main character) introduced the world to the Vesper Martini. But it’s the only one we know of that was invented by an iconic author and popularized by his main character. The Vesper Martini isn’t the only three-ingredient cocktail on the block.

What Is A Vesper Martini? Although the Vesper Martini wasn’t the only cocktail imbibed by James Bond, it’s still called the James Bond cocktail.

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