Vesper

The Vesper — sometimes called the Vesper Martini — is a strong, dry, spirit-forward cocktail of the Martini family, built from gin, vodka and a measure of the aromatised aperitif wine Lillet Blanc, shaken hard and strained ice-cold into a stemmed glass with a large thin twist of lemon peel. It was invented not by a bartender but by a novelist: Ian Fleming wrote it into the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1953, where Bond dictates the recipe to a barman and names the finished drink after the double agent Vesper Lynd. Pale straw-gold, bracingly cold and high in alcohol, it is dry and aromatic, the juniper of the gin and the clean punch of the vodka rounded by the honeyed, faintly bitter orange-and-quinine note of the Lillet. It is one of the most famous fictional cocktails ever written, and a genuine modern classic listed by the International Bartenders Association.