Goldfinger

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“That was it. That was an idea. He would spend the night in Miami and get drunk, stinking drunk so that he would have to be carried to bed by whatever tart he had picked up. He hadn’t been drunk for years. It was high time.” —Chapter 1

Published: 1959.

Overview: Between drinks, James Bond manages to derail Auric Goldfinger’s audacious plan to rob the United States Gold Depository at Fort Knox. After a relatively sober outing in Doctor No, 007 starts knocking them back in the first chapter, and doesn’t look back. Besides the highest drink count yet, this novel features some of the most obscure wines and liquors of the entire series.

What does Bond drink?

• In Chapter One, titled “Reflections in a Double Bourbon,” we join 007 in the final departure lounge of the Miami Airport, and find he has already had two double bourbons. As he reflects on his latest mission, he signals a waitress and orders a third double on the rocks. When the drink arrives in a “wide, chunky glass,” he swirls the bourbon around for the “ice to blunt it down” and swallows half of it. We learn that 007 is melancholy over killing a bandit in Mexico City, who accosted Bond as he walked back from a last drink at the Copacabana. Finding he has forgotten about his bourbon while replaying the incident in his head, Bond picks it up, tilts his head back and swallows the drink to the last drop (the ice tinkling ”cheerfully against his teeth”). He decides to spend the night in Miami and get stinking drunk.
• After Junius Du Pont runs into Bond (he was at the table during 007’s baccarat duel with Le Chiffre), the millionaire snaps his fingers for a waitress. He asks Bond what he’d like to drink, and after 007 requests a bourbon on the rocks, adds a Dimple Haig and water for himself. After the drinks arrive, Du Pont raises his glass and toasts Bond’s health. 007 smiles non-committally and drinks.
• In Miami, Du Pont treats Bond to dinner at Bill’s on the Beach. After ordering stone crabs from the waiter, the American asks the wine waiter for two pints of Pommery ’50 pink champagne in silver tankards. When the wine waiter asks if they would like a cocktail to start, Bond orders a vodka martini with a slice of lemon peel. Du Pont tells the waiter to make it two, and to make the drinks doubles. When the martinis arrive, Du Pont tells the wine waiter to bring two more in ten minutes, and then he and Bond drink. The second round is brought to them a few minutes later. After Du Pont tells Bond about consistently losing to Goldfinger at Canasta, their dinner arrives. The waiters bring a silver dish of crabs, a sauceboat of melted butter, a long rack of toast, and the tankards of champagne, which froth pink. Bond proceeds to devour “the most delicious meal he had had in his life.” The champagne (which seems to have the faintest scent of strawberries) is ice cold, and each drink cleans the palate for the next helping of crab. After dinner, 007 refuses Du Pont’s offer of cigars or liqueurs.
• When Bond uses the microphone to let Goldfinger know that he has solved his cheating method, he tells the villain to book a compartment for Bond and Jill Masterton on the Silver Meteor to New York, and to see that the room has a bottle of vintage champagne on ice, and plenty of caviar sandwiches. Later, when Bond reminisces about the train trip, we learn that he and Jill had indeed eaten the sandwiches and drank the champagne before their romantic encounter.
• As Bond drives through Goldfinger’s territory in southern England, he theorizes that the villain probably used the port at Ramsgate to transport gold in his trawler, since the authorities there were only on the lookout for smuggled French brandy. After he checks into his room at the Channel Packet, Bond heads down to the snack bar and has a vodka and tonic and two excellent ham sandwiches (with plenty of mustard).
• We learn that during weekends, Bond often plays ten-pound Nassaus (a type of golf wager) with “tough, cheery men who were always so anxious to stand you a couple of double kümmels after lunch.”

Kümmel (or kummel) is a sweet grain alcohol-based liqueur flavored with caraway seeds and cumin. It actually is a favorite at British golf club bars, since it supposedly helps improve the swing.

• After his match with Goldfinger, 007 reflects that golf pros are careful men who do not drink and smoke. Before he heads over to Goldfinger’s house in Reculver (for drinks and dinner at 6:30), he has a large vodka and tonic with a slice of lemon peel in the hotel bar. He notices a group of American Air Force officers drinking whisky and water and talking about baseball. After wondering if they had been flying around the area with a hydrogen bomb, Bond wryly reflects to himself “Not too much of that whisky, cousins.” He then pays for his drink and departs. As he drives, he savors the drink inside him.
• Goldfinger’s living room has a well-stocked drink tray on a low settee; Oddjob indicates it to 007 when he arrives. Before Goldfinger leaves on his half-hour “errand” (ostensibly to fix a matter with the local police), he tells Bond to help himself to drinks. 007 fixes himself a strong gin and tonic. After he finishes snooping around Goldfinger’s home, Bond splashes more gin into his glass. When Goldfinger returns, he says that a member of his staff had a row in a pub. He tells Bond to have another drink, and 007 noisily pours one. (Fleming remarks that the two men were acting like old friends or neighbors who were accustomed to dropping in on each other for a drink.) As Goldfinger examines his bedroom (and discovers his surveillance film has been exposed), Bond takes a deep swallow from his drink.
• During dinner, Goldfinger asks Bond to try the Moselle wine, a Piesporter Goldtröpfchen, and expresses the hope it’s to his taste. (He tells 007 to help himself, since his Korean servants are “as likely to pour it into your plate as your glass.”) Bond pours some of the wine (which is in a slim bottle in an ice bucket) and tastes it. It is “Nectar and ice cold.” 007 congratulates his host.

There are more than 350 different estates in the Piesporter Goldtröpfchen, a wine-growing region in the Mosel valley known for its Rieslings.

We learn that Goldfinger does not drink or smoke. He says he has not found a liquor that does not contain deadly poisons such as fusel oil, acetic acid, ethylacetate, acetaldehyde and furforol. Goldfinger adds the chemicals cause various side effects lightly dismissed as hangovers. “Since you are a drinker, Mr Bond, I will give you one word of good advice. Never drink so-called Napoleon brandy, particularly when it is described as “aged in the wood.”” He says it contains the most poisons of any liquor he has analyzed, with old bourbon coming in second. (The Minister is heartbroken.) Bond responds “Perhaps for those reasons I have recently taken to vodka. They tell me its filtration through activated charcoal is a help.” (We learn this is a dim recollection of something 007 once read.) As dinner continues, the servants bring Bond roast duckling and a bottle of Mouton Rothschild 1947. During a conversation about Karate, 007 takes a “deep draught of the delicious claret.”
• After Bond plants the homing device in Goldfinger’s car at Customs, he drives over to a pub he knows in Rye.
• In Orleans, Bond eats dinner at the buffet in the Hôtel de la Gare. He drinks a well-iced pint of Rosé d’Anjou (produced in the Anjou region of the Loire valley), and has a Hennessy Three Star with his coffee. (Three Star is a VS, or Very Special, cognac.)
• As Bond daydreams during his pursuit of Goldfinger through France, he imagines himself having a tryst with the mysterious woman in the Triumph. They would have ice-cold Vouvray for lunch, and then at dinner, they would drink champagne.

Vovuray is a white chenin blanc wine from the area around the town of Vouvray in the Loire Valley.

• In St. Laurent, Bond plans to find a butcher, a baker and a wine shop for his lunch. After he wrecks Tilly Masterton’s car (and she convinces him to take her to Geneva), Bond tells her to get him sausage, bread and butter, and a half litre of Mâcon with the cork pulled. Tilly says she will get the same things for herself. They later eat in the car near the Swiss border.

Mâcon (or the Mâconnaise) sits between the Burgundy and Beaujolais regions, and is known for turning out decent red and white table wines. The best-known type is Pouilly Fuissé, a Chardonnay. Since the area is most famous for its white wines, we’ll assume that is what 007 is having.

• In Coppet, Bond drives up a lane that goes through some vineyards in order to get a closer look at Enterprises Auric A.G.
• In Geneva, at the Bavaria brasserie, Bond has a double Enzian, washed down with Löwenbräu beer.

Enzian is a type of schnapps produced from the Gentian, an Alpine wildflower. Found in many of Europe’s Alpine regions, it is usually bottled at an alcohol strength of 16 to 18 percent. Likened by some to a Tyrolean tequila, Enzian is said to have similarly hallucinogenic after-effects. Fleming claims this “firewater” is the cause of Switzerland’s chronic alcoholism.

As 007 feels the schnapps warm his stomach and “melt his tensions,” he orders dinner, along with another double Enzian and a carafe of Fondant.

Usually spelled Fendant, this Swiss dry white wine is best known as one of the main ingredients in fondue.

• In New York (where he is held captive in Goldfinger’s warehouse) Bond orders Oddjob to bring him food, and a “bottle of bourbon, soda, and ice.” He makes himself a “solid” bourbon and soda (for more on solid drinks, see From a View to a Kill). When Goldfinger comes to talk with Bond, he warns 007 against attacking him with the liquor bottle (the villain displays a small gun, and asserts that he never misses). Bond replies, “Don’t worry. I’m not as accurate as that with a bourbon bottle.” Later, after he orders lunch for Tilly, 007 pours himself a second bourbon and soda.
• Before the Hoods’ Congress begins, Bond notices champagne in silver coolers and a row of other bottles on a long buffet table. Following the meeting, Jed Midnight asks Bond “how about a little drink?” At the buffet table, 007 offers Pussy Galore and Tilly some champagne. After his rebuff by Pussy, he has a “quiet square meal off caviar and champagne.”
• As he kills a half an hour at Idlewild Airport (now JFK) before flying home, Bond has a bourbon and soda in the restaurant.
• When Goldfinger begins questioning him on board the hijacked B.O.A.C. plane, Bond demands a bottle of bourbon, ice, and soda water. Five minutes later, the bottle is on the tray in front of 007, and he pours himself a stiff bourbon. He picks up his drink, sips it, and is about to take a deeper drink when he notices something written on the coaster that is sticking to the bottom of the glass. Bond removes the ice cubes from his drink and puts them back in the ice bucket. He drinks most of the remaining whiskey so he can read the message (from Pussy) through the bottom of the glass. After dinner, Bond drinks “a good deal of bourbon.”
• After disposing of Oddjob and Goldfinger, Bond prepares to confront the men flying the plane. As he passes the galley, he notices an unbroken bottle of bourbon rolling gently amidst the wreckage. Bond uncorks it and takes a drink, the liquor burning like disinfectant. He puts the cork back in and proceeds forward.
• After he surprises the five men in the cockpit, Bond uses the radio to contact Ocean Station Charlie, an area of the North Atlantic patrolled by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. After the operator tells him they’ll have “whisky for one and irons for five,” 007 tells them to add a cup of tea for the pretty girl on board. Pussy, who is standing behind the door, tells Bond to call the operator back and “make it two whiskies. Tea makes me hiccup.”
• Two hours later (after ditching the plane in the ocean), Bond is lying in a warm cabin aboard the ship, “luxuriating in the peace and the heat of the whisky.” Since it’s an American ship, we’ll assume the whiskey in question is bourbon.

Other people’s drinks:

• To keep order during the train trip to Fort Knox, the hoods from the various gangs are prohibited from drinking.
• Felix Leiter does not have a drink in this novel, though to be fair, he only appears for six pages.
• When Bond wakes up on the hijacked plane, Pussy tells him that she has been eating caviar and drinking champagne.

Brand names: Dimple Haig, Pommery, Mouton Rothschild, Hennessy, Löwenbräu. Interestingly (considering Bond has some 11 whiskies in this novel), Fleming never specifies what brand(s) of bourbon 007 is drinking.

Other observations: Bond begins and ends the novel with glasses of whiskey.

Total: 30. Four double bourbons on the rocks, five bourbon and sodas, a straight slug of bourbon, an undetermined whiskey (which we’re counting as bourbon), two double vodka martinis, a tankard of pink champagne, at least two glasses of champagne (one of them vintage), two vodka and tonics, three gin and tonics, a glass of Piesporter Goldtröpfchen, at least one glass of Mouton Rothschild 1947, a pint of Rosé d’Anjou, a Hennessy Three Star cognac, at least one glass of Mâcon, two double Enzians, a Löwenbräu beer, and at least one glass of Fondant wine.