3 oz gin (something dry, okay?)
1 oz vodka (something clean, alright?)
½ oz Kina Lillet
Shake it with ice to make it really cold, and strain into a martini glass with a well twisted twist of lemon.
It’s not as clean as you’ll see it looking in the James Bond movies, but there’s a mighty good reason for that and I’m about to tell it to you, so listen up and pull up a chair:
Kina Lillet no longer exists. It used to, but tastes change, and at some point the folks who made Kina Lillet stopped making it and these days all you can get is Lillet Blanc. And don’t get me wrong - Lillet Blanc is the stuff to use (what else are you going to use?) but it’s sweet, and Kina Lillet is reputed to have had a bitter finish. Now, if you get nerdy on the Internet, you’ll find that people are mostly happy with Lillet Blanc as a replacement. Those are the same people who think Outback serves marvelous steaks, and they should be ignored.
A smaller cadre have gone in pursuit of close approximations of the original Kina Lillet. Some people say to add some bitters to Lillet Blanc. Others forsake Lillet altogether for Cocchi Americano. I can’t speak with any knowledge about that option. The tiniest few murmur about adding quinine (red cinchona bark powder) being the closest modern day approximation of the original Kina formulation. But you can’t just walk into your local apothecary and order up a few ounces of red cinchona bark anymore, because the apothecary’s out of business and I live in Pittsburgh anyway so whatever, so I ordered some on the Internet - from a place in Philadelphia called Penn Herb (where it turns out you can just walk in and buy an ounce of red cinchona bark) and it arrived today.
So, without a whole lot of ado, I mixed up my best effort at a recreation of the original Vesper Martini. I followed strangers’ advice and used 1/8 tsp. of red cinchona bark, and tried to dissolve it into ½ oz. of Lillet Blanc. You can sort of see that in the photo. What you can’t see is how, 15 minutes later, lots of the cinchona has settled to the bottom of the drink, leaving a clear, pinkish concoction in the upper 95% of the glass.
Now, I don’t know how these things are supposed to taste, but what I have right here tastes amazing. It’s immeasurably smoother than any of the approximations I tried with bitters, and it beats the snot out of any stripe of vermouth martini. So.
Are you into martinis? Kind of a nerd? Maybe just a lush searching for a creative excuse to get loaded? Look no further. This is your ticket right here. And if you like this? Thank Gruber. I’d never heard of any of this until he put me onto it, and man oh man does he have some explaining to do to Julie, now.
Serious explaining. Yum.