Vesper

Novice

The Vesper was created by Ian Fleming for his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, published in 1953. Bond orders it in chapter seven, dictates the recipe to a bartender unprompted, and names it after Vesper Lynd, the double agent at the heart of the novel. It is one of very few cocktails invented in fiction that crossed into genuine bar culture. Three ingredients: gin, vodka and an aromatised wine, shaken not stirred, served in a deep champagne goblet with a large thin slice of lemon peel. The instruction to shake rather than stir is the most debated piece of direction in cocktail writing, and it is preference rather than technique. Fleming wrote Kina Lillet, which was reformulated in 1986 into the lighter and less bitter Lillet Blanc. The official specification names Lillet Blanc and that is the recipe above; the Cocchi Americano build below carries the quinine bitterness the original had, and is the closer reading of the 1953 text.

High-ABVSpirit-ForwardShakenAperitifClassic

Variations

Glassware: Nick & Nora Glass

Garnish: Lemon Twist

Ingredients

Serves

London Dry Gin

45ml

A London Dry with strong juniper character. The gin leads and needs enough backbone to hold its own alongside the vodka without the two flattening each other.

Vodka

15ml

A clean, neutral vodka adding proof and body without competing flavour. The gin is the lead here and the vodka supports the structure underneath it.

Lillet Blanc

7.5ml

The official measure, and a small one: half a measure against three of gin and one of vodka, doing all of the sweetening on its own. This is the direct descendant of the Kina Lillet Fleming wrote, lighter and less bitter since the 1986 reformulation.

Instructions

Chill a Nick & Nora glass in the freezer or with ice water before building the drink.

Add the gin, vodka and Lillet Blanc to a shaker with cubed ice.

Shake hard for 12 to 15 seconds until well chilled and properly diluted.

Discard the chilling ice from the glass and strain the drink cleanly into it.

Express a large, thin slice of lemon peel over the surface, rest it on the rim and serve.

Source: the IBA (Official IBA specification; method ours). Last checked 13 August 2026.

Expert Tip

This drink is more sensitive to the choice of aromatised wine than almost anything else, because the gin and the vodka provide so little sweetness between them and there is nothing else in the glass to compensate. At 7.5ml the Lillet Blanc carries the entire modifying job from a very small measure, so pour it accurately and pour it from a bottle opened weeks rather than months ago. Cocchi Americano makes a more bitter drink and a closer one to what Fleming described, which is why it sits below as a variation with its own measures rather than as a substitution note. If you have Lillet Blanc and want to move that way without buying another bottle, a small dash of orange bitters recovers some of the complexity the 1986 reformulation removed. The gin matters almost as much: at 45ml against 15ml of vodka it leads, and it needs the backbone to do so.

Flavour Profile

JuniperDryBitterAromaticCitrus

The Origin

Fleming published Casino Royale in April 1953, and the Vesper appears in chapter seven, ordered in the casino bar at Royale-les-Eaux with a specificity suggesting he had given the recipe genuine thought.

Three measures of Gordon’s gin, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet, shaken until ice cold, served in a deep champagne goblet with a large thin slice of lemon peel. Bond names it after Vesper Lynd when she appears later in the novel, and the name stuck in the fiction and in real bars alike. A poorly balanced drink does not survive that transition, and this one did.

The Shaken Instruction

Bond’s instruction to shake rather than stir has been argued about since publication, and both sides are describing the same thing accurately.

The conventional position in serious bartending is that stirring produces a cleaner, more precisely diluted result in a spirit-forward drink with no citrus in it, and that shaking introduces aeration and a slight cloudiness. That is true. Fleming’s Bond shakes it, and the shaken version is colder, more diluted and slightly aerated. Both are the Vesper. Whether the instruction is character, preference or a deliberate signal of iconoclasm is left to the reader.

Kina Lillet and the Reformulation

Kina Lillet was an aromatised wine from Bordeaux with a significant quinine content, giving it a pronounced bitterness that made it a distinctive modifier rather than a background one.

The brand was reformulated in 1986 as Lillet Blanc, considerably lighter and less bitter, with most of the quinine character removed in response to changing tastes. That made a more commercially successful product and a less useful ingredient for drinks designed around the original's bitterness. The official Vesper names Lillet Blanc, and at 7.5ml it is a light, clean, gin-led drink.

Cocchi Americano, a quinquina produced in Asti, sits closer to the original than anything else widely available, and the difference is immediately apparent side by side. It also wants a larger measure to do the same structural work, which is why the variation below is poured at 22.5ml rather than 7.5ml.

The Gordon’s Question

Fleming specified Gordon’s by name, the dominant London Dry of the era and the most widely available quality gin of the mid-twentieth century.

Gordon’s today is produced at a lower strength than the product Fleming knew, reduced in the United Kingdom market in 1992, and the lower proof produces a noticeably less assertive Vesper. A London Dry at 47 per cent or higher comes closer to the original character, which matters here because the gin is carrying three quarters of the spirit volume and the aromatised wine is doing all of the sweetening.

How to Serve It

Shaken hard and strained into a well-chilled coupe or Nick & Nora, with a large thin slice of lemon peel expressed over the surface and rested on the rim. No ice in the glass and no other garnish.

Fleming specified a deep champagne goblet, which is worth knowing and rarely worth following: modern coupes are smaller and keep the drink colder for longer. Serve it to people who already know what it is and to people who do not. It has enough cultural weight to carry both conversations and enough quality to justify the attention either way.

The Spirit

Gin

A flavour requirement rather than a method. The law asks only that juniper be the predominant taste and that the spirit reach 37.5%, which leaves everything else on the botanical bill to the distiller and permits a gin that was never redistilled at all.

Learn more

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Vesper?

Gin, vodka and Kina Lillet, shaken not stirred and served in a deep champagne goblet with a large thin slice of lemon peel. Ian Fleming wrote it for James Bond in Casino Royale, published in 1953.

Why is it called a Vesper?

Bond names it after Vesper Lynd, the double agent at the heart of Casino Royale. It is one of the very few cocktails whose documented origin is a novel rather than a bar, and it crossed into real bars intact.

Lillet Blanc or Cocchi Americano?

Neither is wrong. The official specification takes 7.5ml of Lillet Blanc, which is what the recipe above pours and what most bars serve. Cocchi Americano keeps the quinine bitterness that Lillet lost in its 1986 reformulation, so it reads closer to the Kina Lillet Fleming actually wrote, and it appears here as a variation with its own measures.

Should it really be shaken?

Fleming’s Bond shakes it, so that is how it is written here. Stirring gives a cleaner, more precisely diluted drink; shaking gives a colder, slightly aerated and cloudier one. Both are the Vesper, and the choice is preference.

Master the Techniques

How to Shake a Cocktail Like a Pro

Martini

The Martini is the most argued-about drink in the history of bartending. The disputes over ratio, gin versus vodka, stirred versus shaken, olive versus twist have run for over a century, and most are preference dressed up as correctness. The Martini tolerates a wide range of builds. What it does not tolerate is imprecision or poor ingredients. The version documented here is a gin Martini at the official ratio of six parts gin to one of dry vermouth, stirred, served cold, with a lemon twist. At that ratio the vermouth reads as a mineral edge and a wine note behind the juniper rather than an equal partner, which is where the modern consensus has settled. Wetter builds are set out below and none of them is wrong. The fashion for extremely dry Martinis, with the vermouth reduced to a rinse or omitted entirely, produces what is technically chilled gin. There is nothing wrong with chilled gin. It is not a Martini. The vermouth matters as much as the gin. Treat it as perishable, keep it refrigerated, and replace it within four weeks.

Corpse Reviver No. 2

The Corpse Reviver No. 2 appeared alongside its brandy sibling in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, accompanied by his now-famous warning that four consumed in quick succession were sufficient to unrevive the corpse entirely. Where the No. 1 retreated into obscurity, the No. 2 became one of the most ordered classic cocktails of the contemporary revival. The warning has done nothing to discourage that. Equal parts gin, Cointreau, Lillet Blanc and fresh lemon juice, with a rinse of absinthe coating the glass before the drink arrives. The absinthe is not an ingredient in the conventional sense: it never enters the shaker, it lines the glass, and it is discarded before the drink is poured. What it leaves is an aromatic signature on every sip that no measured addition could replicate. Lillet Blanc is the modern substitution for Kina Lillet, which contained considerably more quinine and produced a more bitter, complex result. Cocchi Americano is the closer match.

Gibson

The Gibson is a Martini with one substitution: a cocktail onion in place of the lemon twist or olive. That substitution is the entire definition of the drink, and the source of a reasonable debate about whether a garnish change can constitute a distinct cocktail. It can. The pickled onion is not decoration: it introduces brine, acidity and a faint sweetness from the pickling liquor as it sits. The origin is disputed. The most cited account attributes it to a San Francisco businessman named Walter D.K. Gibson, who either requested the onion as a personal preference or used it to identify his glass at parties where he drank water rather than gin. Neither version is verifiable. The build is identical to the Martini in every respect except the garnish. The onion should be a quality pickled pearl onion with genuine brine character, because a cheap one introduces a synthetic note the gin and vermouth cannot absorb.