Cocktail writers spend a lot of time making themselves useful by carrying on about “a new twist on a classic cocktail.” Not me, I’m about to suggest two very old twists to jump into this summer. On May 8th, in celebration of Ian Fleming’s birthday I raised a glass of — to quote James Bond in Casino Royale (1953) — “Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka and half a measure of Kina Lillet …” garnished with a great whacking lemon peel.
The Vesper holds its own today. Lillet blanc (you can’t get the original Kina Lillet anymore) is a blonde fortified dessert wine that replaces the dry vermouth. This works well in a world of sweeter cocktails and has more body than the classic martini. If you aren’t a closet bartender and want to outsource one, pop into Acre Restaurant, helmed by chefs Wally Joe and Andrew Adams. The food is great, but they’ve also got a hell of a bartender, Acre’s bar program director Morgan McKinney. If you are going to go around town ordering something like a Vesper, you need a bartender who knows her game. These things go down way too smooth, by the by.
The James Bond of the movies may have had a signature drink, but the literary Bond and his author were all over the place cocktail-wise. Which brings us to another old/new twist: Old Tom Gin. It was the first English style, sweeter than the London dry that replaced it, but drier than the Dutch Jenever style. It gets its name from the original gin craze that came a lemon twist away from wholesale wreckage of English society in the early 18th century. At the time, English law said you had to have an eyewitness to finger someone for a crime, so unlicensed gin dealers shut themselves up in small houses with no windows and attached a cast-iron cat head and paw coming out the front door. Need a dram? Put your copper in the tomcat’s mouth and a spout hidden in the paw would fill up your glass or jar — or pour straight into your mouth like a pre-industrial vending machine.
The base spirit used was distilled from malted barley sourced from Scottish whiskey producers. After a second distillation to get the proof up, they doctored it with sweet botanicals to mask a complete lack of quality control. With invention of the continuous still in 1831, producers were dealing with a more refined spirit and the cleaner, drier “London dry” style was born.
A few years ago, Hayman’s, which makes a fantastic London dry, came out with an Old Tom style. Several distillers have followed suit, including the very good Ransom gin. In a market flooded with new gins, take a crack at this OG — original gin. In full disclosure, I haven’t made an Old Tom martini — but it might be interesting. Not having a sweet-tooth, I wouldn’t make a Vesper out of it. It is, though, a novel twist on the classic gin and tonic (or soda).
The bourbon boom was fueled by reviving “authentic” styles for modern tastes — and now that it’s hot as Hades, why not do the same for gin? Besides, we’ve got a new megalomaniac coming out of Moscow who is out of central casting for the next Bond villain, so I’m not sure that the Vesper really is all that out of step with the times. If you make one, use Ukrainian vodka.
Everything old, it seems, is new again. As for Ian Fleming, he may not have been the greatest writer, but as someone who has written an espionage novel that did not become a multi-generational cultural icon, I’ve really got to admire the man’s long game.
Correction: An earlier version of this column inadvertently listed Morgan McKinney as Acre’s bartender without crediting her by name. McKinney is the bar program director at Acre. The Memphis Flyer does not condone sexism in any way, shape, or form, and we apologize for this error.
