So we purchased a bag of cinchona bark and tried to infuse it back into Lillet Blanc ourselves.

In our zealous nerddom, we weren’t going to stand for this. Kina Lillet doesn’t exist anymore and was replaced with a much sweeter variant called Lillet Blanc. We couldn’t find a bottle of Kina Lillet and quickly learned why: Kina Lillet had been reformulated in 1986 to remove this distinctive bittering ingredient to appeal to a broader palette. The bark of tree introduced the bittering ingredient quinine into the spirit.

The name “Kina” derived from the kina-kina tree (also known as the cinchona tree). Lillet is a French fortified Semillon wine flavoured with citrus peels. To begin, we referenced the recipe as it first appears in the novel in Chapter 7: Nevertheless, the drink became re-popularized by its reintroduction in the film version of Casino Royale (2006). Perhaps due to how the novel ends, James Bond never orders a Vesper again in the books ( although Felix Leiter orders him another version of one in the novel, Diamonds Are Forever, but I digress). In the following chapter, Bond names this drink a “Vesper” after the preeminent Bond girl, Vesper Lynd. Unlike a standard vodka martini usually characterized by vodka, vermouth, and an olive, this drink uses both gin and vodka, Kina Lillet instead of vermouth, and lemon peel instead of an olive. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Instead, James Bond first asked for a cocktail to be shaken in Chapter 7 of Casino Royale, the first novel by Ian Fleming that debuted the character in 1953: The catchphrase, “shaken, not stirred,” was not, however, born in association with a vodka martini. The drink with which James Bond became the most associated is the vodka martini, due largely to its recurring appearance in the movies (we count it in 16 of the films to date). We knew we wouldn’t make it very far throwing James Bond cocktail parties without first dialing in our specifications for and serving two drinks: the vodka martini and the Vesper.

Vesper cocktail casino royale