Bamboo cocktail in a coupe glass, pale amber, garnished with toasted almonds

Bamboo (Savoys 1930 recipe)

Name: Bamboo (Savoys 1930 recipe)
Prep time: 3 min
Total time: 3 min
Yield: 1 serving
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: Fino sherry — 45 ml (1 1/2 oz); Dry vermouth — 25 ml (5/6 oz); Rosso vermouth — 25 ml (5/6 oz)

Stir ∙ 3 min ∙ 13.5% ABV ∙

The Bamboo is a sherry-forward stir of fino sherry with equal parts dry and sweet vermouth — a Savoy-era recipe that swaps the base spirit for fortified wine. Nutty and saline from the fino, balanced by dry vermouth's herbal snap and a whisper of caramel sweetness from the rosso — a low-proof aperitif for slow evenings.

Ingredients

Servings

Garnish

Toasted almonds

Instructions for 1 serving

Pre-chill a glass
Stir all ingredients with ice: Fino sherry 45 mlDry vermouth 25 mlRosso vermouth 25 ml
Fine strain into the chilled glass
Garnish with a toasted almond

Tips

Stir, never shake, since this all-wine build lacks spirit backbone and shaking bruises the sherry, leaving the texture thin and overly aerated.
Stir over large cubes for about 20-25 seconds to reach proper dilution; the low-ABV mix needs less time than a spirit-forward stir.
Chill the fino sherry and both vermouths in the fridge beforehand since none of the ingredients are high-proof enough to stay cold on their own.
Toast the almonds just before serving and set them beside the coupe rather than dropping them in, so the garnish stays crisp against the chilled drink.

History

The Bamboo is a sherry-and-vermouth cocktail with no base spirit, first referenced in American newspapers in 1886, when it was attributed to an unnamed Englishman serving three parts sherry to one part vermouth in New York barrooms. Most accounts instead credit German-born bartender Louis Eppinger with creating the drink, based on William Boothby's 1908 book The World's Drinks and How to Mix Them, which named Eppinger and located him at the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, Japan, where he managed the bar from around 1890 until his death in 1907. Because the 1886 reference predates Eppinger's arrival in Japan by several years, some historians argue he more likely first mixed the drink earlier, while still working in San Francisco or Portland, Oregon, and that Boothby's account merely reflects where Eppinger was employed at the time of writing. Whoever originated it, the drink is generally regarded as a dry-vermouth twist on the earlier Adonis cocktail, which used sweet vermouth, and by the early 1900s Bamboo recipes varied in their sherry-to-vermouth ratio and in whether dry or sweet vermouth, or both, were used. The version recorded in Harry Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book splits the vermouth between French (dry) and Italian (sweet) styles alongside dry sherry, differing from Boothby's earlier formula, which called for dry vermouth alone.