Gin as defined by EU law is produced by:
“Flavouring a neutral spirit from agricultural base with a minimum strength of 96% abv with natural flavouring substances so that the taste is predominantly of juniper.”
From this it is obvious that gin is essentially a spirit flavoured with juniper, however other ‘botanicals’ can also be used to impart their own flavours as prescribed by the master distiller. For instance coriander seed, angelica root, and dried citrus peel are common in all gins.
However the base spirit will also have a key part to play, with clean crisp spirits made from wheat providing a popular canvas to start with, whereas a spirit made from sugar or molasses would give a sweeter base. No surprises there!
So now we know what gin actually is, maybe we should look at where it all came from? To understand this we need to explore a close relative to gin, Genever.
In the 14th century, juniper berries were used to treat stomach complaints, and even thought to aid in the defence against Black Death. As this disease stormed though Europe, so did the juniper berry, and commonly in a watery alcoholic form.
These eventually arrived in Flanders in 1572, when Franciscus Sylvius created the first ‘eau de vie genievre’, eau de vie being a beautiful Gallic term for the ever-present phrase ‘water of life’.
So we have our first alcoholic spirit with the added delight of juniper. Of course it’s very important to remember we are discussing the late 1500s, so this would have been a very raw form.
This became a stable part of the Dutch diet, and remained here until William of Orange became the King of England in 1689. William encouraged the distillation if this juniper flavoured spirit for a number of reasons, the best being the fact the he had declared war on France, which meant there was no Brandy coming into the country at all!
The English being the English did as their king told, and consumed this new spirit in high numbers. One source states that in 1720 the 600,000 population of London were drinking 12 million litres of this crude spirit, totalling half a litre a week per person! The spirit we describe now can at best be described as ‘Old Tom Gin’ which was a harsh, sweet and heavy on the juniper.
The issues with the levels of consumption were only controlled in 1761, when gin distillation was only permitted to large-scale producers. By 1803 nine producers owned 90% of the producing power in London, including a certain Gordon’s, and Tanqueray.
From here we see the arrival of a new drier style of gin, and with the advent of the Coffey still creating better quality base spirits, we see the emergence of the London Dry Gin. We also start to see more complex recipes in terms of botanicals added, helping to take gin from being a low class drink of the masses to a now very middle class drink.
This new style of gin was now England’s national spirit, and very soon was being exported to the USA where bartenders saw this new clean spirit as the perfect base for the next big thing- cocktails.
Gin went from strength to strength in the USA and England as the mixing spirit of choice. Then unfortunately, for gin that is, in the1960s vodka made a strong push into the mixing market. The 1970s and 80s were hard times, with consumption levels dropping, however over recent years, there has been quite a resurgence with new gins covering a wider range of flavour profiles, meaning that there is now a gin for every occasion, and every drink.
