Urban Bar: Vesper
You cannot talk about 1960s cool without talking about James
Bond. And that means the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good: he was the
epitome of male aspiration in ways that tell the tale of the times, that lead
to the bad and the ugly. In Ian Fleming's books and on the cold war screen,
Bond was aggressively male, with the accoutrements of the role play and ownership of the role. As the firmament of male glamour, he exuded savoir faire earned from adventures worldwide. He routinely ate the steak dinners most salarymen only aspired to. He
was dapper when average joes were slobs whose wives, moms, and girlfriends said
so, but while Bond wore suits of enviable tailoring, he was just as comfortable
in his swimsuit, his jammies, or his operative blacks. He knew his way around a
complex military maneuver, a curvaceous double agent, and a wine list. He was an
adventurer and a player, as well regarded in combat as at The Playboy Club.
It was the Cold War, and 007 style tells the truth of those
times, as bonded as the cement in a fallout shelter. While Bond's props and
costumes were as important as gear and looks are to the modern man, he
represented the ideology of the warrior who never lost a fight because the
rightness for which he stood superseded everyday authority. That was as true of soldiers and agents battling
on the icy terrain of the Cold War as it was of folks who read novels and went to the movies. In style and in substance, James Bond succeeded because he
inhabited a void that symbolized a fantasy. James Bond succeeded because he
lived beyond the rules. James Bond succeeded because he fought, fictionally, beyond
skirmishes between right and wrong, in the wartime theatre of evil versus
good.
That substance, style and subterfuge are all present in
James Bond's first signature cocktail: The Vesper. As anyone who's seen a film
clip knows, Bond drank "vodka martini, shaken not stirred," so first
things first: a Vesper is not a vodka martini. A vodka martini is, well, a
vodka martini, and there are those who'd argue that that makes it not a martini at all. A Vesper is a mixture of
vodka, gin, and Kina Lillet, mixed like a martini and served just as icy. In Bond's debut Casino Royale, Fleming both set up James Bond's regrettable attitudes towards women and set him up to move forward to vodka via the shadowy, lethal Vesper. The Vesper cocktail was
christened by Bond after Vesper Lynd, the first Bond woman and the one who set
up her successors to match Bond treachery for treachery while turning him into
the target of his own misogyny.
If there ever was one, the trail of the pre-Bond Vesper has gone cold.
There is intelligence that it was created, either for Fleming or at least so
that he knew about it, by a London-based bartender or by a very successful
business leader. Vesper Lynd utilized timing to advantage, so it may or may not
be relevant that both of these theories arrive in the 1960s whereas the Vesper appears
in Casino Royale, publication date 1953. Even if it hadn't been memorialized by
Ian Fleming, the proposition of the Vesper's provenance as a pre-Cold War
cocktail, perhaps as far back as the Jazz Age, interestingly gains credence by
its usage of Kina Lillet, an older formulation of the apertif we now know as
Lillet Blanc. Kina Lillet would have been common at bars both London- and
Bahamas-based, the two lairs between which Fleming jet-setted, and while some
speculate that it was just a common cocktail at the gentlemen's clubs of the
time, the best intel supports a covert operation between London bartender and
Fleming HQ.
The Vesper is one of those misunderstood cocktails that
(then) your uncle who wore horn-rimmed glasses and railed against commies ordered when he tired of Harvey Wallbangers and (now) hipsters order when they tire of craft beer and Moscow Mules. Vespers are stealthy, because outside of a bartender who knows their history as well as their well, it takes skill and precision to uncloak a well-built Vesper. Mastering
the Vesper is a de regeur skill in any swankster's spy
kit.
Balance is important in any cocktail; in a Vesper, it is absolutely vital. The
smoothness of the vodka should balance the assertiveness of the gin to provide the
whisper of the Lillet safe haven for landing. Because it is stirred, not shaken, the
drink achieves a silken quality that glides into the glass, as seductive as
lingerie. Because the Vesper is built for two, the seduction is as masterful as a stunt drive.
Vespers is the time in the Christian church when believers
gather at sunset. The belief is common among world religions that times of transition - dawn, noon, sunset, midnight -- possess great power. On this weekend when my birthday coincides with the
presidential inauguration, this child born on a cusp in the 1960s has transitions on his mind. Cold war intrigues operate on propaganda and spy stories follow a
straight line, but it turns out that espionage operates not in the theatre of
evil versus good but backstage, off to the side, in the shadows. We had thought
we were done with the Red Menace, but now we inaugurate the cultural reverb of tumult. We step back in time to the era of spies, to the amassing of power through inequity. The present seems like the past and that makes the future murky. Everything old is new again. This is the twilight world of the Vesper.
Vesper
Kina Lillet, the apertif that defines the historic Vesper,
is no longer available. The Lillet Blanc used in this recipe is the accepted
substitute for cocktails, such as the Corpse Reviver, that contained Kina
Lillet. Keep a small bottle of vodka in the freezer for drinks such as the
Vesper; freezing thickens vodka while coaxing its smoothness. This recipe makes
cocktails for two.
6 ounces London dry gin, such as Broker's, Beefeater, or Bombay
2 ounces Russian vodka, such as Stolichnaya
1/2 ounce Lillet Blanc
1 lemon
- Place two martini glasses in the freezer.
- Place a dab of food-safe vegetable cleaner in your palm and rub the lemon with the cleaner. Rinse the lemon under cool water until it feels clean.
- Safely use a vegetable peeler to exise two long thin strips of lemon peel. Gently shape the peels into a spiral. Place one lemon spiral into each martini glass so that it spirals up the inside of the glass, following the shape of the glass.
- Fill a glass cocktail shaker with ice.
- Measure the Lillet Blanc, gin, and vodka into the shaker in that order.
- Use a cocktail spoon to stir the cocktail until the glass of the shaker is ice cold.
- Use a strainer to gently divide the cocktail between the two iced and garnished martini glasses. Pour gently in order not to disturb the positioning of the lemon peel garnish.
- Serve immediately.
Urban Bar
Appetizers for the Bar
Comments
Post a Comment