Enjoying Lillet the James Bond way

A visit to France in the summer of 2017 was an exciting, sometimes exhausting, but overall memorable experience. Visiting the Palace of Versailles and its extensive gardens in 36°C+ heat was the true test of what one is prepared to endure to see this landmark. The visit was prebooked before we left Cape Town to avoid the long queues, so we had no alternative option but to accommodate the extreme weather conditions.

Prebooking might have limited our choice of weather conditions during our visit, but it did spare us the long queues awaiting us on 21 June 2017 at 9:30, when we arrived at the Palace. Our return trip to Paris that afternoon proved an adventure of its own. Most trains on our planned route had been cancelled owing to the heat affecting the safety of the steel railway tracks. Which it was feared, might buckle under such extreme conditions.

The Paris metro was no walk in the park either with sweltering heat and sweaty fellow commuters. I remember the bright seats at the different metro stations. The bright blue, yellow, green and red. The red seats with their backdrop of a Lillet Blanc advert made me long for a refreshing chilled Lillet on the rocks.

We like Lillet Blanc and had a bottle chilling in the fridge of our apartment in Paris, to enjoy on hot afternoons after a day of exploring the city. We enjoyed it straight, with soda water and with gin, like a martini.

Remembering our trip to Paris in 2017, I recently decided to order a box of six bottles of Lillet from Johannesburg. For some reason it is not available in Cape Town.

After receiving my stock of Lillet Blanc, I decided to explore the other options of serving Lillet. My go-to book for classic cocktails is the Savoy Cocktail Book by Harry Cradock, published in 1930. With a selection of 23 cocktails containing Kina Lillet, I had quite a selection of cocktails to try. They have names like Self-Starter Cocktail, Prohibition Cocktail, Maiden’s Prayer Cocktail (No.2), Happier and Happier Cocktail, Great Secret Cocktail, Depth Charge Cocktail, Corpse Reviver (No.2), and many more.

The First Lillet advertising iron plates from 1896

The Lillet Blanc with a reduced quinine flavouring replaced Kina Lillet in 1986. Kina Lillet was manufactured from 1887 to 1986. The original Kina Lillet had quinine liqueur made of cinchona bark from Peru added as one of the ingredients.

Maison Lillet decided to reformulate Lillet in 1985, in collaboration with the Bordeaux University's Institute of Oenology. Both the quinine bitterness and corresponding sweetness were reduced.

In Ian Flemming’s debut 007 novel, Casino Royale, published in 1952, the author had his hero ordering his signature dry martini, “shaken not stirred”. I think this is the first and only time that James Bond gives the recipe of how he likes his cocktail, 'A dry Martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.'

'Oui, Monsieur.'

'Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon- peel. Got it?'

'Certainly, monsieur.' The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

'Gosh, that's certainly a drink,' said Leiter.

Bond laughed. 'When I'm-er-concentrating,' he explained, 'I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made.”

In 1952 the Kina Lillet as an ingredient made sense. But for Daniel Craig’s James bond to order it in the 2006 film version of the book, it seemed like some script writer did not do their homework. It just did not ring true to order a cocktail with an ingredient of which the name and formula had changed 20 years before.

My martini cocktail book only refers to this recipe as the James Bond martini. Five years after our visit to Paris we could enjoy Lillet Blanc again. This time made with Ian Flemming’s 1952 recipe for a dry martini and enjoyed in the Towerwater lounge, shaken not stirred.

It was a good way to break the ice (pun intended) of our Lillet adventure at Towerwater this summer.