007 on the town: 101 whiskeys, 19 vodka martinis and a few dozen glasses of sake

A big fuss was made over the fact that Daniel Craig in the latest James Bond movie, Skyfall would be seen sipping Heineken beer after the producers signed a lucrative product placement deal with the beer company. Everyone know that Bond's favourite tipple is a vodka martini - or is it?

A study of the Fleming books reveals that on average Bond takes a drink every seven pages and throughout the entire series drinks exactly 317 drinks.

Now of these 317 drinks his preferred poison was whiskey of which he drinks 101 in total, among them fifty seven bourbons and thirty nine scotches. 007 also likes champagne and drinks 30 glasses throughout the series. He also likes sake which he tries in the book, You Only Live Twice and ends up drinking thirty five of them. And out of all the drinks Bond consumes in the entire Fleming canon he only sips the iconic vodka martini 19 times, while he opts for gin martinis 16 times.

The famous "shaken not stirred" line was first used in the novel, Diamonds are Forever, but the line was uttered by Sean Connery in the movie Goldfinger and countless times since, with Roger Moore's Bond insisting on his drinks shaken and not stirred more than any of the other Bonds- why shaken and not stirred?  Well  shaking a vodka martini actually makes the drink colder and sharper.

“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.

Ian Fleming's biography reveals that Fleming preferred his own martinis mixed with gin, but in later life he switched to bourbon on his doctor's orders.


It seems that Bond, like Fleming, was a man who knew what he liked.