The Man with the Golden Gun

Buy it from Amazon.com

“The best drink in the day is just before the first one (the Red Stripe didn't count). James Bond put ice in the glass and three fingers of the bourbon and swilled it round the glass to cool it and and break it down with the ice.” —Chapter 7

Published: 1965.

Overview: Suffering amnesia after his final showdown with Blofeld, James Bond is brainwashed by the KGB, and is sent to kill M. Following his rehabilitation, he is assigned to take out a deadly KGB assassin, Francisco "Pistols" Scaramanga. Released posthumously, the novel is less detailed than Ian Fleming's other works, and is also stylistically different. Although completed by Fleming before his death, the book was "polished" for publication by Kingsley Amis (who would later write the Bond adventure Colonel Sun).

What does Bond drink?

• As Bond plans for dinner with Mary Goodnight at Morgan's Harbour, he asks the owner of the hotel for broiled lobsters with butter and a "pot of that ridiculously expensive foie gras of yours." When the owner asks if he'd like champagne on ice, Bond responds, "Good idea."
• After a nap, Bond walks to a small bar on the waterfront and orders a double Walker's Deluxe bourbon on the rocks. After watching the pelicans dive for fish, he orders a second double with a water chaser "to break it down." When Mary shows up, she's wearing pearls, and a short dress "the colour of a pink gin with a lot of bitters in it." When Bond asks if one of the pearls contains a suicide pill, she says yes, but since she can't remember which one, she'd "have to swallow the whole string. Can I have a daiquiri please instead?" Bond orders the drink. When it comes, she sips it carefully. Bond reflects that Goodnight rarely drinks, and doesn't smoke. He orders another drink, feeling somewhat guilty that it's his third double, that Mary doesn't know that, and she won't recognize it as a double when it arrives. As he lights, and then stubs out a cigarette, we learn that Bond was under rigid training rules during his recovery, and that he must now follow them again. But he tells himself the champagne won't count. As Mary tells him about sabotage against Jamaica's sugar crop by Cuba, she sips her drink. (By the way, although the actual dinner is not detailed, we'll assume Bond and Mary have their bottle of champagne.)
• In the Dreamland Café (which is part of a house of ill repute) , Bond orders a Red Stripe beer. Tiffy deftly uncaps the bottle, and puts "it on the counter beside an almost clean glass." When Bond asks about renting a room, she says the place is sometimes noisy when a customer has had too much to drink. Just as Scaramanga arrives, Tiffy asks if Bond would like another Red Stripe. He says, "That'd be fine." Later, after Bond mockingly offers to buy Scaramanga a drink, the gunman kills a pair of birds that Tiffy has befriended. She takes Bond's beer bottle and throws it across the room. Bond drinks the rest of his glass of beer and then goes over to console Tiffy, who is sobbing behind the bar. Later, as Scaramanga questions Bond, he orders two Red Stripes. Tiffy brings over the beers (and two glasses) on a tin tray. After he pays, both men pour their beers and drink.
• After he arrives at the Thunderbird Hotel, Bond orders a bottle of Walker's Deluxe, along with ice and three glasses. After his order arrives, he pours three fingers of the bourbon and swirls it around in the glass to melt the ice. As Bond sits and reads (JFK's Profiles in Courage) he drinks the whiskey in two long draughts, and feels its "friendly bite at the back of his throat and in his stomach." As he thinks about Scaramanga, he refills the glass, using more ice in order to make the second drink weaker. A little later, after aiming his Walther at various objects in the room, he returns to the drink. After dinner in his room (eggs Benedict) Bond pours himself a final drink and then goes to bed. (By the way, he balances the three glasses on his suitcase by the door to wake him in case anyone tries to come into his room during the night.) Getting up in the middle of the night, Bond actually drinks a glass of water.
• When Bond enters the hotel bar ("a mock-English public-house saloon" with silver tankards behind the bar), there are bottles of champagne in antique coolers on the tables. Scaramanga's "guests" carefully sip their drinks. Bond tells the barman he'd like a pink gin made with Beefeater and plenty of bitters. (By the way, the pink gin was one of Ian Fleming's favorite drinks.) After that, there is "desultory talk about the relative merits of gin." Everyone else is drinking champagne, except for Mr. Hendricks, who has a Schweppes Bitter Lemon.
• As Bond sits outside the conference room, he uses a champagne glass to listen to the conversation within. When Scaramanga gets up to see if Bond is listening, 007 quickly moves his chair and raises the glass to his lips as if he is drinking. As the conference continues, we learn that the group is holding six ships loaded with raw sugar at anchor just outside U.S. ports. They're hoping to raise the price of sugar and turn a profit, with the inadvertent help of the liquor lobby and the "rum barons" (worried about the rising price of molasses). Just before the meeting ends, Bond goes and pours himself a glass of champagne from the buffet. When Scaramanga sees Bond, he says "that's enough of the house champagne." We learn there will be drinks, dinner and dancing girls in the evening. As Bond unlocks the lobby door for the men, he acts slightly inebriated. (By the way, we'll call this one glass of champagne.)
• Back in his room, Bond takes "two heavy slugs" from his bottle of bourbon, and takes a cold shower.
• When he arrives for dinner at 8:30, Bond notices that all the men have had plenty to drink, with the exception of Scaramanga and Hendricks. Fleming does not detail whether Bond has anything to drink with dinner. (However, dinner concludes with a bombe surprise, a dessert that will play an important role in the conclusion of the film version of Diamonds Are Forever.) As Bond accepts the challenge of livening up the party, we learn that what he drank has made him careless (although it's impossible to tell if that means only the bourbon or includes additional drinks he might have had with dinner). Bond goes onstage and tells the leader of the calypso band that he'll be sending over "plenty of rum to loosen things up." He also tells him it's OK for the band members to smoke marijuana (let the '60s begin!). Returning to his seat, Bond asks Scaramanga to send rum to the band. Later, one of the dancing girls does a limbo under a bamboo pole balanced on top of two beer bottles. When the routines end, Bond gets glasses of champagne for two of the girls, as most of the other men dance to the music of the band, now half-drunk.
• In his room (after learning Hendricks has discovered his true identity), Bond takes a "strong nip of straight bourbon."
• The next day, as Scaramanga and Hendricks meet in the conference room, Bond repeats his eavesdropping trick with the champagne glass. He overhears part of Scaramanga's plan to eliminate him, along with details of many other KGB plans. Bond wonders if he will live to get the information back to headquarters. "God, for a drink!"
• As Scaramanga details the plans for the excursion to Green Island Harbour, he mentions that there will be a champagne lunch, and drinks when they return back to the Thunderbird.
• As a wounded (and very thirsty) Bond searches for Scaramanga under the hot Jamaican sun, he begins to imagine the champagne buffet at Green Island Harbor. "And there would be drink! Champagne in frosted silver coolers, rum punches. Tom Collinses, whisky sours…." He also imagines Scaramanga offering him "just one more goblet of iced champagne." Then, as he snaps out of his reverie, he thinks "Goblets of iced champagne? That'd be the day!"
• As Bond gets ready to turn down an offer of knighthood from the Queen, he thinks about the annual gathering of secret service veterans. They would tell secret tales "over the Cockburn '12, when 'The Queen' had been drunk" to someone like Bond.

If you have to try it, Cockburn 1912 port is still available today for a pricy 628 euros. This particular vintage is described with terms like "magnificent" and "legendary."

Other people’s drinks:

• After Bond's assassination attempt on M fails, M mulls over the situation as he eats lunch alone at Blades. The club's headwaiter, Porterfield, comments to the headwaitress, Lily, that something is very wrong with M. He asks if she knows about "that terrible stuff Sir Miles always drinks." He is, of course, referring to the Infuriator, an Algerian red wine that's so bad that the Blades wine committee won't allow it on the wine list. Apparently, they only keep it on hand to please M. (M once told Porterfield that it was named the Infuriator because if one drank too much of it, they would go into a rage.) The headwaiter tells Lily that in ten years, M had never ordered more than a half a carafe of the wine. But today? "The old man says, 'Porterfield. A bottle of Infuriator. You understand? A full bottle!'" Porterfield says he didn't comment and brought the wine as requested.
• Scaramanga, the greatest pro gunman in the world, does not drink.
• Unfortunately, Bond and Leiter do not have their traditional drinking session. In fact, Leiter does not drink during this novel.

Brand names: Walker's Deluxe bourbon, Red Stripe beer, Beefeater gin.

Other observations:

• After Bond reappears in London, Chief of Staff Bill Tanner tries to warn M that things don't add up. He says that normally, Bond would have contacted him at home, and they would have had a few drinks before Bond reported in.
• In the Kingston airport, Bond surveys the duty free shop with its perfumes, liquors and local souvenirs. As he sits killing three hours (waiting for a flight to Havana), we learn that it's "the wrong time for a drink." (We were somewhat surprised to learn that this is even possible in Bond's universe. Obviously, the brainwashing had a greater effect than anyone suspected.)
• There are numerous casual references to alcohol throughout the novel, from wine-red shirts and carpets, to the idea of Scaramanga sending his guests "back half drunk to their syndicates." ("They might go to bed drunk...but they would awake sober.")
• While he recovers in the hospital, Bond's doctor orders that he be given fruit juice. Leiter later makes a crack about Bond returning to duty once he's off the orange juice.

Total: 15. Six double bourbons, three drinks from a bottle of bourbon, at least half a bottle of champagne, a glass of champagne, three beers, and one pink gin.