The History Behind Gin’s Comeback

"Welcome to America: The Vodka Nation.”
This definitively would be the welcome banner displayed at Ellis Island if European immigrants of the 20th century had arrived to New York by sea a century later in the 21st century.
    But this article is intended to give Nightclub & Bar readers a deeper understanding of the history of gin, the spirit that shaped the cocktail culture in the United States and the world over. Gin is a spirit developed for the proprietary medicinal virtues of its main flavoring ingredient: juniper berries.
    Ancient Greeks and Romans were the first civilizations that utilized juniper berries for medicinal purposes, benefiting from juniper’s diuretic properties, and they also thought these berries to be an appetite stimulant and a remedy for arthritis.
    By the 12th century, Italian monks added juniper to spirits distilled from wine, and in the 1300s, Europeans drank juniper elixirs to fight bubonic plague.
A Dutch physician in the Netherlands developed gin in 1650. The spirit’s name itself derives from juniper berries better known as genievre in French and later shortened by the English into “gin.”
    But gin’s popularity began with British troops fighting in the Low Countries during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Gin gave the troops “Dutch Courage” during the long campaigns. The term was first coined by returning English soldiers to England.
The gin boom in England began around 1690, when William of Orange ascended the British throne with Queen Mary in 1689. The king encouraged using domestic grain to make distilled alcohol, rather than promoting grape brandy made by England’s enemy, the French.

The Best of Times …
    Gin quickly became the common people’s drink. By 1690, England produced almost half a million gallons of it a year.
    In response to rampant abuse of the spirit, The Gin Act of 1751 forced distillers to sell only to licensed retailers and brought gin shops.
    Gin in the mid-1700s to early 1800s was produced in pot stills, and was somewhat sweeter than the London Dry gin known today. During the second half of the 19th century, gin gradually changed in taste. Originally it was sweet and more aromatic; this was known as Old Tom, which gradually went out of fashion after the “London Dry” become more established.

The Modern Age
    The modern gin distilling industry in the United Kingdom started with the emergence of the gin-distilling families in the 18th and 19th centuries, such as the Coates, Gordon, Tanqueray, Burnett and Burrough families to name a few.
    In the 1830s, at the peak of the Industrial Revolution, London Dry gin first came into being. It was a complex drink that appealed to a more sophisticated palate, and this had enormous impact on the status of gin. Nowadays London Dry Gin can be made anywhere in the world.
    From the 1830s, gin drinkers belonged to a much higher class than in the past. They met in a “gin palaces” — the ancestors of modern bars — rather than in shady taverns and inns, which had dubious reputations.
    English gin became accepted as a guarantee of quality, as much as French Champagne was.

Atlantic Crossing
    During the 1920s and 1930s, the newly popular idea of the cocktail party crossed the Atlantic from the United States to Britain, and gin was de rigueur  for the classic Dry Martini cocktail. With Prohibition, America banned liquor advertising and the use or sale of anything that might lead to its manufacture. But English gin continued to enter the United States in various ways.
    Half-full demijohns of moonshine obtained from bootleggers were filled with water from the bath tap and flavored with juniper syrup from the drugstore, earning the moniker “bathtub gin.” Due to the poor quality of this gin, several gin-based cocktails were born in order to disguise its poor taste by adding juices and liqueurs.
    By 1950, gin had become one of the essential drinks for home entertainment, and the Gin Martini and Gin & Tonic were staples.
    Today, as consumers are rediscovering older quality brands such as Plymouth, Beefeater and Tanqueray, producers are crafting exciting premium versions such as Ten by Tanqueray, Tanqueray Rangpur, Bombay Sapphire, Hendrick’s, Junipero, Aviation, Citadelle and Miller’s, to name a few.
    A true bartender should have no fear of mixing gin with fresh elements such as fresh-squeezed juices, bitters, premium liqueurs — laced together by creativity and enthusiasm. Or just take pride in re-proposing a gin-based  classic cocktail by sharing a bit of liquid history in a glass.                 NCB

Francesco Lafranconi is director of mixology and spirits educator with Southern Wine & Spirits, a national wine and spirits distributor in 27 states.