Rolls Royce

An elegant stirred cocktail with gin, sweet and dry vermouth, and a touch of Bénédictine — a Savoy classic that rewards the patient sipper.

The Rolls Royce appeared in Harry Craddock's The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) and takes its name from the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars brand — the British automobile manufacturer founded in 1906 by Frederick Henry Royce and Charles Stewart Rolls as a partnership that combined Royce's engineering precision with Rolls's distribution connections. The company's early cars, including the Silver Ghost introduced in 1907 and its successors, quickly established Rolls-Royce as a synonym for exceptional quality, engineering refinement, and understated luxury in a way that no other automotive brand had yet achieved. The original Silver Ghost was advertised as the best car in the world, and by the 1920s Rolls-Royce had become the standard cultural reference for anything of supreme quality and undemonstrative elegance. The cocktail's formula — gin with equal parts dry and sweet vermouth and a dash of Bénédictine — is a Perfect Martini structure elevated by the Bénédictine's 27-botanical herbal complexity. The Bénédictine, produced in Fécamp, Normandy since 1863, adds warm herb and honey notes to the dual-vermouth base without overwhelming the gin's botanical freshness, creating a drink that is simultaneously rounded and complex. The name's connotation of refined, engineered excellence suits a preparation whose balance is as precise as the automobile it references.