🥃 Vesper

Vesper is the cocktail every James Bond reader knows: gin, vodka and the French aperitif Lillet. Bond invents it in Ian Fleming's novel Casino Royale in 1953: "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."

IBA recipe. Today the recipe is 45 ml of gin, 15 ml of vodka and 7.5 ml of Lillet Blanc, shaken with ice and strained into a chilled glass. It is garnished with lemon zest. The Kina Lillet that Fleming meant has been discontinued, so today one uses Lillet Blanc or similar aperitifs.

Name. Bond names the drink after his colleague Vesper Lynd. According to the Oxford Companion, an old legend about the bartender Gilberto Preti at the Dukes hotel has been disproved: he started work there almost twenty years after the author's death. It is more likely that the recipe was mixed by Fleming's friend Ivor Bryce, to whom the writer inscribed a book "to Ivor, who mixed the first Vesper".

Serving. The drink is mixed by shaking, not stirring as Bond demanded. This makes it very cold and slightly dilutes it. The lemon zest gives an oily aroma. The cocktail does not appear in Fleming's later novels, but it returned in film adaptations, where the bartender repeats the original recipe word for word.

Why this matters to you. The Vesper has almost no sweetness or juice, so the alcohol is barely noticeable, but there is a lot of it. The WHO reminds us that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.