Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure One – Fossey’s Barrel Gin.
This morning, I saved a turtle. I really thought that might give me some positive karma because the divinities know, I need it. I won’t go over the last six months of crap – I know others have things much worse, but spare me, I must have been a really bad person last life. Perhaps I’ll get to all that soon.
Anyway, after today’s endless farce (actually farces), I hit the wall. Gave up. As someone who normally reads every day, even if only 5 minutes before crashing, or a couple of hours if the opportunity arises, it has been January since I opened a book. So this afternoon, down at the beach shack – my fave place for a cigar as I have mentioned before, I took myself downstairs it the outside, pulled out the couch and fired up an Epi 1. Been here about three weeks and this was my first chance.
Was going to pull out some you-beaut whisky or rum but I thought, no, a gin. It was very much a gin afternoon.
I've been fortunate to have seen a large chunk of the world and I say without hesitation or without any belief that this can be contested, the weather in south-east Queensland/northern NSW in April/May is the best in the world, anywhere, anytime. Put simply, I know this because it cannot be better. Of course, as soon as I think that, although I have said it for years, the gods giggle and dump seven days of rain. Today, for the first time it was what it should be. Perfect.
This morning, I did the beach walk and saw a lump in the sand. A curious rock. Turns out to be a turtle shell. And alive. About 2/3rds the size of a dinner plate, a freshwater turtle, which must have been washed out of the creek into the ocean and somehow got to the beach. Buried in sand on an ocean beach is not a healthy place for a freshwater turtle, especially when this is about a kilometre from the creek’s mouth so I picked it up – it did a little run to escape but ran in a circle back to me (I guess the fact that it got washed out of its creek should have alerted me to the fact that this was perhaps not the brightest reptile in the vicinity) – and so I carried it back to the creek. If you hold them right way up, they squirm and claw but if you carry them upside down, they stay quite still. Let it go and it started floating to the mouth again (what did I mention about not the smartest reptile?), so a bit of nudging and it finally worked out it was free and bolted for the upper reaches. I thought that might give me some karma with the gods, because lord knows I need it, but no. Still waiting for that karma???
I'm sure most are familiar with how 007 first invented and named the Vesper, his gin cocktail named after the Bond Girl de jour (if you are not, check out either the book or the film of Casino Royale). So I created my own. Half Fossey’s Barrel Gin (they bottle by way of each cask – this one, the Aglianico Rose) and half Dr Strangelove’s Light Tonic, with ice and a lime chopped up and squeezed in. If Bond can call his a Vesper, I call mine a Lada. I was going to call it a trainwreck, but that seemed too close to home. It is a cracker. And if you think that half/half is a bit too strong, trust me when I say that after this week/month/year, not finding me necking the bottle is a positive.
The Epi? Lovely. Biscuits, a hint of caramel, soft, nuts, good balance. Got more caramel and nutty. Good length. Thoroughly enjoyed it. 90.
As it happens, I have recently done a piece on 007 and his drinks for Q&P so worth stealing from it, if I may (well, I wrote so that would be yes, I may).
“I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink,” James Bond says to Vesper Lynd in Ian Fleming’s first 007 novel, Casino Royale. Big appetites were the order of the day back then, and 007’s were huge, in every respect. Rarely has anyone, fictional or otherwise, influenced the eating and drinking habits of humanity to the extent managed by MI6’s finest.
If I may allow myself a small digression before we get anywhere, my favourite moment in that first novel is when Bond returns from assignment and catches up with Moneypenny. Apparently, they have a tradition in which he always brings her a present, the latest high-tech item available. The mind boggles as to what he could have found over the years. In Casino Royale, the latest high-tech item was a ballpoint pen. Feeling old yet?
Which provides a neat segue to changing times. In his first outing, Daniel Craig (my second favourite Bond, for what it is worth) proves himself a harder drinker than his predecessors, with 12 drinks. One journo from Bloomberg rather callously described him as a “witless boozer” – very harsh (for the record, Timothy Dalton was positively abstemious in comparison). Not too many witless boozers get off on the 1982 Château Angelus or a bottle of Bollinger, let alone invent their own martini, the Vesper.
Many years earlier, the literary version of 007 in Casino Royale topped Mr Craig with 13 drinks, including the Vesper, a number of vodka martinis (how many times must I say, “no gin, no martini”), plus various champagnes, including Veuve Clicquot and the 1943 Taittinger Blanc des Blancs (the forerunner to the spectacular Comte des Champagne – the first vintage of that wine was 1952 and the book was published in 1953, which would have been years before the ’52 hit the market).
Bond describes this bottle of Taittinger as, “Probably the best in the world.” This really kicked off the Blanc de Blancs fad in America. Good enough for Bond, it created the myth that Blanc de Blancs was the best champagne style – it is unquestionably wonderful but not necessarily better than others.
Bond also drank Taittinger in On her Majesty’s Secret Service as well as Krug. In other books, more Veuve, Veuve Rosé, and Pommery. Bollinger makes an appearance in Diamonds are Forever.
In Moonraker, he drinks the 1946 Dom Pérignon, which is interesting as it was never made. Worse? He drips Benzedrine, a form of amphetamine, into it. Bollinger first appears in the movies in Moonraker, when Bond crawls through Holly Goodhead’s window in Venice and spies an ice bucket. “Bollinger,” he quips. “If it is the ’69, you were expecting me.”
The ’46 Dom Pérignon was not his only error. In the film Diamonds are Forever, he claims to be able to pick 1851 as the year a sherry solera was started. If I may say politely: fat chance! Bond does expose the villains at the end of the film when, posing as waiters, they do not realize that the 1955 Mouton is a claret (Basil Fawlty made a similar mistake, if I recall). In Goldfinger, he drinks a 1947 Mouton.
Bond’s champagne preference in the films has long been Bollinger although there were around seven times he drank Dom Pérignon, and in the early days it was Taittinger. The first reference to wine in any Bond film is in Dr No when he tells the good doctor that he prefers the 1953 Dom Pérignon to the 1955 (the ’53 was also Marilyn Monroe’s favourite).
In the films, Bond averages a drink every eleven minutes. Not a bad pace.
Recent films have seen Heineken make a number of appearances, apparently through a rather lucrative product placement deal of a cool $45 million (and that was just for one film)! You have to sell an awful lot of beer to cover that. Sounds like the producers got away like bandits in their movies. The Macallan whiskies are also now featuring. Indeed, it was the legendary Macallan 1962 that was criminally wasted when shot from the head of the Bond girl du jour in Skyfall.
Bollinger? Many think the same, a product placement deal that is, and I’ll confess so did I, until I had a chance to have a long chat with a friend from Bollinger at the release of Spectre. He assured me that the company does not spend a cent to have its champagne featured in the greatest film franchise series in history. Seems that there was some sort of disagreement between the Dom Pérignon people and the Bond people – no idea over what – and so the Broccoli family behind the Bond films (and, yes, the family was responsible for the development of the vegetable and for its introduction into America), rang the Bizot family, who owns and runs Bollinger, asking for a lunch.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall (or a waiter sneaking glasses). As a small family operation, the Bond people decided that they had seen enough of big corporates and wanted to deal with another small family. A deal was struck. All Bolly needed to do was provide some three cases (from memory) for each film, but there is no say on exposure. It may be the briefest glimpse or fill the screen. Still, not a bad deal.
In the books (and we are only talking Ian Fleming, not those brought in to keep the series alive), Bond consumes 317 drinks and at a faster rate than in the films. In the books, he drinks champagne 65 times, bourbon 57 times (much more than in the films), whisky 42 (often as a scotch and soda), vodka martini 41, sake a surprising 37, cognac 24, and both gin and red wine 21.
Although he is yet to enjoy a gin martini (in other words, a proper martini) in the films, in the books he did so 19 times. There is an array of “others”: beers, cocktails, raki, glühwein, and Irish coffee.
But why vodka? If not for Bond, would the “vodka martini” even exist? At the time Fleming was writing, anything Russian was taboo – Cold War and all. Vodka was very unpopular. It is believed that Fleming had Bond drink vodka as a way of thumbing his nose at the establishment.
The villains? They rarely drink in the books. Indeed, Fleming made a number of them teetotalers. No doubt a form of contempt.
Of course, what look at Bond’s drinking habits would be complete without “shaken, not stirred” (one of the early books had it reversed, but I have never discovered if that was a misprint in that edition or Fleming got careless).
One story suggests that “shaken, not stirred” was how Fleming liked his martinis and so that was passed on to 007. Many a bartender will insist that a better drink is achieved from “stirred, not shaken.” There was also that wonderful moment in ‘Casino Royale’ when the screenwriters turned things on their head and had the bartender ask Bond whether he’d like it, ‘shaken or stirred’. ‘Do I look like a give a damn?’ was the priceless response.
There is another theory that this famous phrase only came about because of a screenwriter’s error in swapping them. But this is a topic for another time. As is his food . . .
And as for No Time to Die, the latest instalment and presumably Craig’s last, due to hit screens later this year? Well, much still to be revealed, of course, but we do know that the producers spent £55,000 on 8,400 gallons of Coca-Cola. Why (and I’ll confess that I do not have the slightest idea what a litre or any quantity of Coke costs but that seems hefty)?
Not for drinking. It seems that they were having trouble with a bike scene in which the cobblestones were too slippery when Craig himself had an idea. They soaked the cobblestones on which the stunt motorbike was to land with Coke, making them much stickier. It worked perfectly and we’ll see the scene when the movie is released. An added bonus? The Coke apparently left the cobblestones much cleaner.
Things are changing in the world of 007. There are rumours that Bond will be drinking non-alcoholic Heineken in No Time to Die. Say it isn't so!
One further sad fact on which to finish – well, sad for Mr Craig. He is the only Bond to have drunk more martinis than to have kissed Bond girls!
As for that turtle, I am still waiting for my karma, if you don’t mind. Shaken or stirred will be fine.
KBG
