At 7:30 each morning, former spy and late-career writer Ian Fleming would wake at his estate in Jamaica called Goldeneye. His first order of business was to swim naked in the ocean and then eat scrambled eggs, followed by a sunbathe (we presume also in the al fresco). Then he’d sit at his golden Royal Quiet Deluxe and write 1500 words ‘without looking back’.
After this rush of work, it was time to stab some fish, so he’d go spearfishing, and then, as one does, to get pretty well hogged with pink gins at lunchtime. After this came a requisite siesta and then another sunbathe and swim. All this enjoyment would help him produce another 500 words in the evening before many ‘powerful drinks’ and dinner. Then a game of Scrabble and then bed.
This is how the man created James Bond.
But it’s in the booze that we see Fleming be Bond, though perhaps not fully. Fleming was evidently peculiarly and infuriatingly specific about the construction of his martinis. Besides the shaken not stirred aspect, there was also lemon instead of olive, a correct vermouth, a correct gin, and – obviously – a correct proportion of each. These were explained to the drink’s builder (i.e. bartender) in detail and then, to his credit, upon tasting, Fleming congratulated the man as if ‘he had completed a fleet maneuver at tank speed’. Most of all these martinis had to be large.
But martinis were not the only booze that kept Fleming afloat. He peppered his vodka and would only mix bourbon with the ‘clearest branch water’. He found Napoleon brandy an atrocity and thought that no serious drinking should be done ‘under a hot sun’. Though he didn’t make a big thing of matching wine and food, he evidently had a fantastic eye for fine wines. A doctor suggested he switch from gin to bourbon for health reasons (we suppose at a time when ashtrays were present in examination rooms). And, after a heart attack in 1961, he was limited to three (horrific) ounces of alcohol a day and wrote to the British Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to find out the best brands of every alcohol.
Though he lent Bond his tastes in, among other things, drinking and drinks, some of them were not fully conceptualized. When Fleming himself tried the Vesper that Bond drank throughout Casino Royale, he hated it. One journalist spent a day going drink-for-drink with Bond’s daily consumption in GoldenEye and ended up immobile and catatonic. Not especially ideal for toppling Janus and pleasuring Xenia Onatopp. But we forgive Fleming, for Bond is, after all, fantasy. We’re not pissed that Tolkien didn’t hike across a continent and throw a ring in a volcano. I mean, I’d buy that book, but it’s OK.
Surely, there’s no older profession-related mythology than the tortured alcoholic writer. And to support this, we have lots of examples. Hemingway’s liver-based exploits are nationalized at the Smithsonian, Fitzgerald, Bukowski, Parker, Thomas died of drinking after setting a personal record for shots, Faulkner was never out of arm’s reach of a bottle of bourbon. But Fleming distinguishes himself in that he doesn’t seem tortured in the least. He simply loves pleasure and a sybaritic lifestyle – one geared towards pleasure. Like the Bond he created, there were women, fast cars, and travel. There were also bad habits. He smoked 60 to 80 Morton Specials a day. He paired his scrambled eggs with pink champagne. And he drank. Like Bond.
But Bond doesn’t suffer hangovers or get emphysema – at least not that we see. (It’s hard to save Britain when you’re coughing up a lung.) Whether it was the cigarettes or the booze or both, on August 12 1964 Fleming had a second heart attack and died. His last words were to the ambulance drivers and he said: ‘I am sorry to trouble you chaps. I don’t know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the roads these days.’ That he complained about traffic and worked ‘chaps’ into his last words makes his one of the world’s most British deaths.
So, what to drink to celebrate the life of a man who seemed in every way to enjoy himself? The obvious choice of martini is too obvious. Plus, I don’t feel like dealing with the 700 emails about how my Bond Martini is wrong. Bond’s Casino Royale drink – the Vesper – is another possibility, but when Fleming actually got around to trying it, he found it gross. So, no. Then there’s bourbon and water, but a this was the cocktail he was limited to after heart attack one, it might be a bit depressing.
No, it’s mid-August. The beginning of the end of the summer. We need something to bolster our sybaritic selves – something that allows us to enjoy the leisure and pleasure we often try to attain in summer and which Fleming had no trouble reaching.
The Pink Gin. This drink is not only perfect because it is how Fleming celebrated a morning of productivity. It’s also pink and very easy to make. The Pink Gin has been around since the 1800s when British sailors took on German physician Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert’s Angostura bitters as a way to keep stomach issues and seasickness at bay. However, the bitters on its own tastes like medicine, so our British sailors improvised by adding it to gin. in Venezuela, originally as a medicinal preparation. The Pink Gin of course bled out of Royal Navy tradition and into British drinking culture – clubs, hotels, colonial locales, Cold War atmospheres.
In other words: a perfect way to celebrate Fleming, who was British Naval Intelligence during WWII, and whose Cold War-settings Pink Gin appears in the Bond books as well as being associated with Fleming’s own drinking.
Pink Gin ingredients
– 2 oz London dry gin
– 3–4 dashes Angostura aromatic bitters
– Lemon peel, optional
Instructions
Chill a cocktail glass. Put the gin and Angostura into a mixing glass with plenty of ice. Stir (don’t shake) for about 20–30 seconds and strain it into the chilled glass. Express (Drag) a strip of lemon peel over the surface and either drop it in or discard it. This is basically very cold, lightly spiced gin. So despite the word ‘ink’ in its name, it’s going to nuke your world.
