{"id":6489,"date":"2026-08-18T16:46:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T14:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=6489"},"modified":"2026-08-18T16:46:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T14:46:57","slug":"how-to-drink-like-a-spy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=6489","title":{"rendered":"How to Drink Like a Spy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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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\u2019d sit at his golden Royal Quiet Deluxe and write 1500 words \u2018without looking back\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After this rush of work, it was time to stab some fish, so he\u2019d 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 \u2018powerful drinks\u2019 and dinner. Then a game of Scrabble and then bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is how the man created James Bond.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s 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 \u2013 obviously \u2013 a correct proportion of each. These were explained to the drink\u2019s builder (i.e. bartender) in detail and then, to his credit, upon tasting, Fleming congratulated the man as if \u2018he had completed a fleet maneuver at tank speed\u2019. Most of all these martinis had to be large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But martinis were not the only booze that kept Fleming afloat. He peppered his vodka and would only mix bourbon with the \u2018clearest branch water\u2019. He found Napoleon brandy an atrocity and thought that no serious drinking should be done \u2018under a hot sun\u2019. Though he didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019re not pissed that Tolkien didn\u2019t hike across a continent and throw a ring in a volcano. I mean, I\u2019d buy that book, but it\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Surely, there\u2019s no older profession-related mythology than the tortured alcoholic writer. And to support this, we have lots of examples. Hemingway\u2019s 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\u2019s reach of a bottle of bourbon. But Fleming distinguishes himself in that he doesn\u2019t seem tortured in the least. He simply loves pleasure and a sybaritic lifestyle \u2013 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.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Bond doesn\u2019t suffer hangovers or get emphysema \u2013 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: \u2018I am sorry to trouble you chaps. I don’t know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the roads these days.\u2019 That he complained about traffic and worked \u2018chaps\u2019 into his last words makes his one of the world\u2019s most British deaths. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t feel like dealing with the 700 emails about how my Bond Martini is wrong. Bond\u2019s Casino Royale drink \u2013 the Vesper \u2013 is another possibility, but when Fleming actually got around to trying it, he found it gross. So, no. Then there\u2019s bourbon and water, but a this was the cocktail he was limited to after heart attack one, it might be a bit depressing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, it\u2019s mid-August. The beginning of the end of the summer. We need something to bolster our sybaritic selves \u2013 something that allows us to enjoy the leisure and pleasure we often try to attain in summer and which Fleming had no trouble reaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pink Gin. This drink is not only perfect because it is how Fleming celebrated a morning of productivity. It\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u2013 clubs, hotels, colonial locales, Cold War atmospheres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pink Gin ingredients<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– 2 oz London dry gin<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– 3\u20134 dashes Angostura aromatic bitters<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Lemon peel, optional<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instructions<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chill a cocktail glass. Put the gin and Angostura into a mixing glass with plenty of ice. Stir (don\u2019t shake) for about 20\u201330 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 \u2018ink\u2019 in its name, it\u2019s going to nuke your world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019d sit at his golden Royal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1GF","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Ian_Fleming_c._1958_cropped.jpg?fit=413%2C620&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6491,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6489\/revisions\/6491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}