James Bond's favourite vodka martini to make comeback in Spectre
Fans stirred as luxury vodka partnership suggests super-smooth secret agent will be supping his preferred tipple in new film
For half a century the vodka martini - "shaken, not stirred" - has been synonymous with James Bond ever since the secret service agent first uttered the immortal line in Ian Fleming's .
So purists cried sacrilege when, as part of an estimated £28 million (HK$341 million) tie-in with the most recent Bond movie , Daniel Craig clutched a bottle of Heineken in an advertisement for the Dutch brewer.
Aficionados should be heartened, therefore, that normal service could resume with news of a partnership between the makers of , the new Bond film due for release next November, and a luxury vodka brand.
Hot on the heels of Aston Martin's unveiling of 007's new car, Belvedere Vodka has announced its tie-in to the Bond franchise.
No figures have been released, although president Charles Gibb said it was "the largest global partnership we have done to date".
The result, according to Ajay Chowdhury, president of the James Bond International Fan Club, is "the odds are very short" on Craig ordering up Bond's preferred tipple, with the phrase regularly voted as one of the 100 most famous lines in film history.
It was in the book in 1958 that Bond, confronted with the eponymous villain for the first time, declared: "I would like a medium vodka dry martini - with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred please. I would prefer Russian or Polish vodka".
"This is really the drink James Bond is best known for," said Andrew Lycett, Ian Fleming's biographer. "Variations of it crop up in the books and films."
It was not until Sean Connery's third Bond outing, in 1964's Goldfinger, that he was first heard to say those now trademarked words.
They even became so identified with Connery that his successor Roger Moore, though served the cocktail several times, never actually got to order one himself.
Gibb is confident his brand, quadruple-distilled from rye in a century-old Polish distillery, marries perfectly with Fleming's description of Bond's preference for grain-based vodka.
To mark the partnership, Belvedere Vodka - whose core drink is the martini - has produced two limited magnum (1.75-litre) editions: the 007 Silver Sable, in a silver illuminated bottle, and the MI6 edition, decorated with an etching of the MI6 HQ.
"Bond is synonymous with the vodka martini, and I always say inside the vodka martini there is nowhere for the vodka to hide," Gibb said.
Bond films are known for their product placements. (2002), which saw three years of BMW replaced by Aston Martin among countless other deals, was nicknamed "Buy Another Day" for its heavy product placement. Red Stripe beer, Pan-Am, Smirnoff, Avis, L'Oréal and Omega watches have been just a few of those to capitalise on the Bond magic.
Explaining the Heineken deal, Craig said in 2012: "We have relationships with a number of companies so we can make this movie. The simple fact is that, without them, we couldn't do it. It's unfortunate but that's how it is."
Chowdhury said some fans were in uproar over Craig sinking a Heineken in . The brewer has been in partnership with the films since 1998, and still is, though was the first in which Bond himself drank the beers.
Of the true aficionados, he said: "As long as he has his Aston Martin and his vodka martini we are relatively happy."
Fleming's love of vodka arose from his time in Russia as a young reporter, said Lycett, and the author was happy to litter his books with brand names.
Indeed Bond was a drinker - champagne, beers, martinis. One calculation estimated he had ordered 19 vodka martinis and 16 gin martinis in Fleming's novels and short stories.
