City of Lovers
A new cocktail to celebrate the release of the new single by Chris Wood, with visuals by Spencie d’Entremont and Billy Robertson.
You can read more about the project here.
It made sense to have ingredients representing the characters of Bond and Vesper as well as the Venice location. I took as the basis one of my favourite cocktails: a French 75, traditionally made by combining Champagne with gin, lemon juice and sugar. Like most classic cocktails, its origin is ambiguous and there are competing versions. One has it being named after a piece of heavy artillery used by the French army throughout the First World War: a 75mm canon. Whether this story is apocryphal or not, if you up the gin content, it can certainly pack a punch.
I decided to go with a more romanticised version to fit the characters and the setting, complementing the track, the videography and the artwork.
City of Lovers (makes two)
300ml Prosecco (chilled)
60ml London Dry gin (e.g. Gordon’s).
20ml vodka
10ml vermouth
1 fresh lemon
Make a Vesper Martini and leave it in the shaker. My video shows you how to do this effortlessly, but basically: combine the gin, vodka and vermouth in a cocktail shaker filled with large ice. Stir for around a minute or until the shaker has ice forming on the outside. Even better: put the gin and vodka in the freezer a few hours before (it won’t freeze). This way, you will only need minimal stirring to combine the three ingredients.
Fill two Champagne flutes two thirds full with the chilled Prosecco. Pour in the Vesper Martini, straining it straight from the shaker, sharing it between the two glasses.
And that’s it!
As you’ve probably worked out by now, the Vesper Martini represents both Bond and Vesper (he invents it and names it after her) and the Prosecco represents Venice. All Prosecco comes from the region of Italy where you will also find Venice. In the Vesper Martini itself, Bond is represented by the London Dry gin (Gordon's) of course, combined with the French Lillet Blanc. Vesper’s nationality is left ambiguous in the film but Eva Green is French so it seemed fitting. Plunging the Vesper Martini into the chilled Prosecco is akin to that sublime moment in the film where they arrive in Venice, yachting along the Grand Canal, accompanied by Arnold's unabashedly romantic score.
You may add lemon juice if you wish but I tend to find it a bit overpowering. If the lemon is really fresh all you need is a slice of peel, with the oil expressed.
I have a special connection with Venice. It sounds really cliched but it really is the City of Lovers. 10 years ago I went to Venice with my boyfriend (now husband). It was our first ever holiday together. Did Venice help us to fall even deeper in love? Well, maybe. The Prosecco may have helped. We discovered it's the local beverage drunk by everyone in Venice - even fishermen coming in from the night shift have a glass once they're back on shore. And who can blame them?
Salute!
