James Bond’s Tastes: “Goldfinger”

By the time Ian Fleming wrote Goldfinger, his seventh James Bond novel, 007 had dependably developed into quite the gourmet, and the books increased the number of references Fleming put in regarding food and drink—as well as cars, guns, clothes and gadgets—as part of his character and that of his enemies. There are a lot of meals and drinks in Goldfinger and some of the most hilarious uses Bond makes of his taste is in the Sean Connery film that followed, third in the franchise theory and one of the very best, despite a rather far-fetched plotline that involves SMERSH gangster Goldfinger attempting to extort money from the U.S. Treasury by threatening to set off an atomic bomb in Fort Knox that would contaminate the gold inside for thousands of years.

The novel begins with Bond investigating a smuggler’s warehouse in Mexico City, where he kills a gangster, after which he flies to Miami, intending to get drunk, “stinking drunk so that he would have to be carried to bed by whatever thought he picked up. He hadn’t been drunk in years. It was high time.” There he meets an American named Du Pont (who had been at the baccarat table in Casino Royale), and they go off to have martinis, stone crabs and Pommery Rosé Champagne 1950 at Bill’s on the Beach, obviously based on Joe’s Stone Crab on Miami Beach, which Bond afterwards pronounces “The most delicious meal he’d ever had in his life.”

Bond checks into the Cabana Club resort, where he meets Auric Goldfinger, five feet tall, fat and “red as a lobster,” with whom he plays cards. Lunch with Du Pont is at the Floridian Hotel in Homestead—shrimp cocktail, snapper and roast beef. Back at the Cabana Club Bond meets a beautiful woman working for Goldfinger, named Jill Masterton, whom he seduces and with whom he and Goldfinger return to New York on the Silver Meteor, where they dine on caviar sandwiches and Champagne. He checks into the Ramsgate Hotel before flying back to London, where his superior, M, wants 007 to investigate Goldfinger’s gold smuggling and possible connection to SMERSH.

Bond goes to English Goldfinger’s mansion, filmed at Stoke Park House in Reculver on the coast, plays golf and meets the fearsome Oddjob bodyguard. Afterwards, it’s drinks at a pub and dinner at Goldfinger’s that consists of shrimp curry, roast duck and cheese soufflé with Piesporter Goldtropfchen Riesling and Château Mouton-Rothschild 1947. Goldfinger is himself a teetotaler for health reasons, and Bond says that’s one of the reasons he’d recently “taken to vodka,” saying that being charcoal filtered removes impurities.

Afterwards, in a gadget-equipped Aston Martin DB Mark III given him by MI6, 007 trails Goldfinger in his 1909 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost—actually made with solid white gold—to France and Switzerland. Along the way Bond, though preferring the Auberge de la Montespan, he stops at the serviceable Hôtel de la Gare in the Orleans RR station, where at the buffet he eats eggs en cocotte, sole meunière and Camembert and drinks Rosé d’Anjou and a nightcap Hennessy 3 star Cognac.

On the road Bond foils an assassination attempt on Goldfinger by Tilly Masterton, whose sister Jill had been murdered by Goldfinger by painting her body gold. Bond and Tilly picnic on sausages and bread at Lyon, then have dinner at Bavaria Brasserie and enjoy enzian (gentian schnaaps) washed down with Löwenbrau, choucroute garni and Gruyère with a carafe of Swiss Fendant du Valais. They check into the Bouches du Rhône in Les Baux.

Oddjob captures Bond and brings him to a warehouse where a table is set with caviar and foie gras and where he meets another of Goldfinger’s molls, a lesbian named Pussy Galore. Oddjob knocks 007 unconscious. When he comes to, Oddjob threatens to cut Bond in half with a buzzsaw unless he agrees to join Goldfinger in Operation Grand Slam at Fort Knox, which Bond says he will. Tilly is killed by Oddjob.

The Fort Knox operation is foiled, and, on a flight back to England, Bond fights with Goldfinger aboard a hijacked BOAC jet. Bond beats Goldfinger to death. Bond then takes up with Pussy who submits to his “tender loving care.”

In the movie some liberties were taken with the book’s plot, allowing Bond to travel more. In Miami he stays at the Fontainebleau Hotel and orders a 1953 Champagne that arrives too warm. Sporting a hideous baby blue sunsuit, he meets Jill Masterson, has dinner in his suite but is knocked unconscious, awakening to find her body covered with gold paint that suffocated her.

Back in London, he dines with M and members of the Bank of England, where Bond makes one of his most remarkable shows of connoisseurship: When M asks 007 if he there’s something wrong with the Cognac, Bond sniffs and says, “Well, sir. It seems to be a 30-year-old fine, indifferently blended, with an overdose of . . . Bon Bois.”

I have asked people in the Cognac industry if anyone could really figure out such components to such an arcane degree and was told that it would be nearly impossible but that what Bond said was actually based on the facts of Cognac blending: A “fine” is an industry term for brandy, and the overdose of Bon Bois refers to a region in Cognac whose grapes are used in the blend but are considered inferior to the others in the mix from the other regions.

As in the book, Bond follows Goldfinger into France and Switzerland, this time driving an Aston Martin DB5, while Oddjob chauffeurs a Rolls Royce Phantom III and Tilly Masterson drives a ’64 Mustang convertible whose tires Bond destroys with a cutting wheel on his rims. Tilly is killed by Oddjob, who captures 007 and uses a laser beam between Bond’s legs to make him talk, but 007 makes Goldfinger think he knows all about Operation Grand Slam and Goldfinger stops the laser.

Bond is drugged and awakens to find himself on his enemy’s private jet, where a beautiful Asian girl serves him sake, which Bond observes is “served at the proper temperature, 96 degrees.” The jet lands in Kentucky (the airport used in the filming was actually at RAF base at Nortolt in Ruislip, England), where he meets Pussy Galore and enjoys a mint julep on the verandah, which Bond asks to be made with sour mash whiskey and branch water, which is getting way too fussy, insofar as branch water comes from clear springs not likely to be running through the stud farm. And, in fact, most bourbons have always been made with sour mash, a process of using the residue of the spent “beer” allowed to sour overnight then added to a new batch.

The FBI alerted, Operation Grand Slam fails but Bond is locked inside Fort Knox with Odd Job, whom he manages to electrocute just in time to turn off the bomb’s ticking timer just as the digital numbers strike “007.”

Bond gets on a plane with Pussy, who now sides with him, but finds Goldfinger has hijacked the jet and, after a fight, is sucked out of the window hole. Bond lands both the plane and Pussy.