James Bond Drinks, Film by Film: What 007 Actually Orders

In 2018 the Medical Journal of Australia counted every drink in the 24 Eon Bond films from 1962 to 2015. The authors logged 109 drinking events, about 4.5 per film, of which cocktails and spirits made up 59, wine and Champagne 45, and beer only four. Martinis led the cocktails with 18 events. That is a smaller share of his drinking than the catchphrase implies, and it means the real list is stranger than the themed menus built around him. The potions on a Harry Potter party table were invented for the occasion. These were ordered on screen, and most can be made tonight.

The table runs in release order and keeps to drinks with a clear moment in the film.

Shaken, and who said it first

The order is older than the scene most people remember. In Dr. No the martini arrives at Bond’s hotel room mixed to his instructions, and it is the villain who later recites the specification back to him. Sean Connery does not say the words himself until Goldfinger, where the drink on Auric Goldfinger’s jet appears to be gin, judging by the bottles behind the bar. You Only Live Twice then supplies a joke the series rarely repeats: Henderson hands him a martini, says it was stirred, not shaken, and receives a courteous “Perfect.”

Whether shaking improves the drink depends on what the drinker wants. A shaken martini chills faster and takes on slightly more water, since the ice is smashed against the tin, and it also picks up air and small shards that cloud the glass. Bartenders usually stir a gin martini to keep it clear and silky, the argument made in our guide on when to shake or stir a cocktail. A vodka martini has fewer botanicals to protect, so it loses less; ours is an ounce and a half of vodka with a dash of dry vermouth, shaken with cracked ice, and swapping the olive for lemon peel brings it into line with the Dr. No order.

Medicine has taken the phrase further than Ian Fleming did. A 1999 paper in the BMJ’s Christmas issue reported that shaken martinis deactivated hydrogen peroxide better than stirred ones in a laboratory assay, which says nothing about what they do in a person. A 2013 paper in the same slot tallied every drink in the 14 Fleming books, arrived at 92 units a week, and proposed, not entirely seriously, that Bond took his martinis shaken because of a tremor.

The Vesper is a big drink

Fleming’s recipe appears in the 1953 novel Casino Royale, and the 2006 film keeps its proportions: three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka and half a measure of Kina Lillet, shaken until ice cold, with a large thin slice of lemon peel, in a deep Champagne goblet. Our Vesper reads those measures as ounces, as most recipes do, giving four and a half ounces of liquid. At modern bottling strengths that holds about 1.7 ounces of pure ethanol. It is close to three American standard drinks before the ice has added anything.

The Vesper on our site halves everything, to an ounce and a half of gin, half an ounce of vodka and a quarter ounce of Lillet Blanc, although it also stirs the drink, which Bond would have noticed. Our James Bond Martini listing is the same three bottles at full size. The Lillet is the harder problem. Kina Lillet no longer exists under that name, and the Lillet Blanc that replaced it was reformulated in the 1980s with less of the quinine bite. Many bartenders now reach for Cocchi Americano, which comes closer to a drink that was meant to be dry and slightly severe.

Bond’s relationship with the recipe deteriorates fast. Later in the 2006 film, after losing a fortune at the table, he is asked whether he wants his martini shaken or stirred and says he could not care less. By Quantum of Solace the Vesper has become something he drinks in grief, six of them on one flight. The MJA authors put that binge at 24 units, the largest in the series.

A julep, a mojito, some warm sake

Goldfinger’s Kentucky stud farm produces the most locally correct order in the films. Offered a mint julep, Bond asks for sour mash, not too sweet. Our Mint Julep uses two and a half ounces of bourbon, a teaspoon of powdered sugar and two of water, and treating that sugar as a maximum keeps it to his brief.

The Mojito belongs to Die Another Day, in the Cuban scene with Jinx. Tiger Tanaka offers Bond a martini in You Only Live Twice, and he takes sake instead, praising it for being served at 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit, which is body temperature and a perfectly respectable way to warm sake.

Fleming’s novels add one more that the films never made famous. The Americano, an ounce each of sweet vermouth and Campari with soda, is the first drink Bond orders in the first book. It holds perhaps a quarter of the alcohol in a Vesper.

Bollinger, Heineken, Macallan

Champagne takes up more of his screen time than any catchphrase admits. The early films use it as a test of breeding, as when Goldfinger’s Bond insists that Dom Pérignon ‘53 must not be drunk above 38 degrees Fahrenheit. Bollinger arrives with Live and Let Die and has turned up in nearly every film since. Only one recipe in our database names the bottle, the Bolli Stoli, an ounce of Stolichnaya in three of Bollinger. Bond never ordered it. Our James Bond listing, a sugar cube, bitters, vodka and Champagne, is likewise a fan’s tribute and not a film drink. More orthodox options sit among our Champagne cocktails.

The MJA study also recorded a significant rise in alcohol product placement over the decades, and Skyfall made that logic visible when Bond was seen with a Heineken, to the dismay of many fans. Silva’s 1962 Macallan in the same film shows a drink can still do dramatic work. Spectre’s Dirty Martini takes three ounces of gin in our version, with an ounce of dry vermouth and half an ounce of olive brine, and it swaps Bond’s lemon peel for olives.

To order any of this in a bar, name the spirit first, then the method: “vodka martini, shaken, lemon peel.” Bartenders have heard it before, and most will be polite about it. For a viewing party, the simplest menu is whatever the film on screen contains, and CocktailBuilder will show which of those your shelf already covers.

Last modified on November 1, 2026