Aperitif

Bamboo

3 min.Fino Sherry

Chill a cocktail glass.
1
Add the fino sherry to a mixing glass.
2
Add the dry vermouth.
3
Add the orange bitters and, if using, the Angostura bitters.
4
Fill the mixing glass with cold ice.
5
Stir until the mixture is well chilled and properly diluted.
6
Strain into the chilled cocktail glass.
7
Express the lemon twist over the surface of the drink, then drop it in or discard according to preference.
8

Japan
Origin
The Bamboo is a late 19th-century sherry-and-vermouth aperitif cocktail, widely credited to Louis Eppinger of the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, Japan. It was in print by the mid-1880s and appears in Thomas Stuart’s Fancy Drinks and How to Mix Them before being firmly codified by William Boothby in The World’s Drinks and How to Mix Them (1908). Over time, the equal-parts dry sherry and dry French vermouth version became the canonical Bamboo, distinguishing it from the sweeter Adonis.
History
William Boothby explicitly credits Louis Eppinger with creating and naming the Bamboo at the Grand Hotel in Yokohama. Early printed versions often used a more sherry-heavy ratio (around 3:1) before the 1:1 specification became standard. Modern scholarship draws a clear line between the Bamboo (with dry vermouth) and the Adonis (with sweet vermouth), even though both evolved from similar sherry-and-vermouth templates. The Bamboo is frequently cited as one of the earliest sherry-and-vermouth cocktails and an important ancestor of today’s low-ABV aperitif style.
Trivia
Light canapés, Seafood, Salted nuts, Tapas
Pairings
The World’s Drinks and How to Mix Them
Source