James Bond's Martini & its origins

The Vesper Martini was created by author Ian Fleming, the result of various influences, and made famous by his including it in his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, published in 1953. Two upscale Hotel bars, both long favoured by the rich and famous, claim to be the birthplace of Bond's Vesper Martini: Dukes Hotel in St James, London and the Jamaica Inn in Ochos Rios, Jamaica.

The Jamaica Inn lies just 20 minutes' drive along the coast from Ian Fleming's villa, Goldeneye, and was one of his favourite retreats for a drink with visiting friends, notably Hemingway, Churchill and Oliver Messel. Legend has it that a bartender at the Inn invented the cocktail Fleming later named the Vesper while he was drinking with Churchill.

A framed photograph of Fleming with a Martini hangs in the hotel, but it's questionable if this is a Vesper Martini. Churchill not only visited Jamaica Inn, but he also painted it, and the artwork is now owned by the Sultan of Brunei.

The Dukes Hotel's website suggests Fleming's decision to make the Martini his hero's "shaken, not stirred" cocktail of choice was inspired by visits to Dukes Bar in the Hotel, where Gilberto Preti held court for many years, a respected bartender with an enduring reputation for his Martinis.

However, Fleming was penning his books at a time when the Martini was an insurgent, and the influence of Dukes, the Jamaica Inn, or some other hotel bar could have as much been Martini bar calls he overheard from American guests as the cocktails he enjoyed himself.

Considering the role vodka plays in Fleming's Vesper, it's worth noting that the author wrote the cocktail into his first Bond novel in 1952, the year after the earliest known reference to the Vodka Martini in Ted Saucier's 1951 Bottoms Up book.

Vesper Martinis at Dukes

Gilberto Preti started at Dukes Bar in 1987, some 23 years after Fleming died from heart disease. So it wasn't Gilberto who influenced Fleming, but was Fleming influenced by another bartender at Dukes, or just the Martinis served there?

Dukes' reputation for Martinis, and cocktails in general, is quite a recent thing - certainly after 1982 when Salvatore Calabrese started there, 30 years after Fleming wrote the drink into his novel. Indeed, it was Salvatore who created the now famous Dukes' Direct Martini in 1985 for the American journalist, Stanton Delaplane.

So, it is unlikely that Dukes played any role in Bond's cocktail of choice, and it's perhaps more that the "shaken, not stirred" Martini came into Fleming's creative mind while enjoying a Martini at his local, the Jamaica Inn.