The Curious Bartender's Gin Palace E-Book

Tristan Stephenson

• Herausgeber: Ryland Peters & Small
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 513

Beschreibung

An innovative, captivating tour of the finest gins and distilleries the world has to offer, brought to you by bestselling author and gin connoisseur Tristan Stephenson. The Curious Bartender's Gin Palace is the follow-up to master mixologist Tristan Stephenson's hugely successful books, 'The Curious Bartender' and 'The Curious Bartender: An Odyssey of Malt, Bourbon & Rye Whiskies'. Discover the extraordinary journey that gin has taken, from its origins in the Middle Ages as the herbal medicine 'genever' to gin's commercialization and the dark days of the Gin Craze in mid 18th Century London, through to its partnership with tonic water – creating the most palatable and enjoyable anti-malarial medication – to the golden age that it is now experiencing. In the last few years, hundreds of distilleries and micro-distilleries are cropping up all over the world, producing superb craft products infused with remarkable new blends of botanicals. In this book, you'll be at the cutting-edge of the most exciting developments, uncovering the alchemy of the gin production process and the science of flavour before taking a tour through the most exciting distilleries and gins the world has to offer. Finally, put Tristan's mixology skills into practice with a dozen spectacular cocktails including a Purl, a Rickey and a Fruit Cup.

Leseprobe

THE CURIOUS

BARTENDER’S

GIN PALACE

BARTENDER’S

GIN

PALACE

TRISTAN STEPHENSON

WITH PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADDIE CHINN

Designer Geoff Borin

Commissioning Editor Nathan Joyce

Production Manager Gordana Simakovic

Picture Manager Christina Borsi

Art Director Leslie Harrington

Editorial Director Julia Charles

Publisher Cindy Richards

Prop Stylist Sarianne Pleasant

Indexer Ingrid Lock

First published in 2016 by

Ryland Peters & Small

20–21 Jockey’s Fields

London WC1R 4BW

and

341 E 116th St

New York NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text copyright © Tristan Stephenson 2016

Design and commissioned photography copyright © Ryland Peters & Small 2016 (see right for full picture credits)

The author’s moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

eISBN: 978-1-84975-905-2

ISBN: 978-1-84975-701-0

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

US Library of Congress CIP data has been applied for.

Printed in China

All photography by Addie Chinn apart from:

10 Ms 2327 f.81v Two alembics and their receivers, copy of a late 3rd or early 4th century treatise on alchemy by Zosimos of Panoplis (vellum), Greek School, (16th century)/Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France/Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Images; 11a DeAgostini/Getty Images); 11b Hulton Archive/Stringer; 12 Madlen/Shutterstock.com: 13l SSPL/Getty Images; 13c Hulton Archive/Getty Images; 13r Florilegius/SSPL/Getty Images; 14 Culture Club/Getty Images; 15b DEA/R. MERLO/De Agostini/Getty Images; 15cr Hulton Archive/Getty Images; 16 Prisma/UIG via Getty Images; 17 DeAgostini/Getty Images; 18l Buyenlarge/Getty Images; 18r The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images;

19 De Agostini Picture Library/Getty Images;

20 SuperStock/Getty Images; 22l Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images; 22r © Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans; 24l Mary Evans Picture Library;

24r Mary Evans Picture Library; 25 Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images; 26 Mary Evans Picture Library; 27 Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images; 28 Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images; 29a © Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans; 29b Mary Evans Picture Library; 31 The Print Collector/Getty Images; 33 Image Courtesy of The Advertising Archives; 34l Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images; 34r © Florilegius/Alamy Stock Photo; 35a © Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans;

35b Apic/Getty Images; 36 Mary Evans Picture Library;

37 © Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans; 38 Image Courtesy of The Advertising Archives; 39l Photo 12/Getty Images; 39r Topical Press Agency/Getty Images; 40 © The Art Archive/Alamy Stock Photo; 41Image Courtesy of The Advertising Archives; 48 © Falkenstein/Bildagentur-online Historical Collect./Alamy Stock Photo;

50 www.caorunngin.com; 58 Grant Dixon/Getty Images;

59a Ed Reschke/Getty Images; 59c Ed Reschke/Getty Images; 60 Glow Cuisine/Getty Images; 61 Maximilian Stock Ltd/Getty Images; 62 palomadelosrios/istock; 63l Nobu Miyadera/EyeEm/Getty Images; 63r Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images; 64l Martine Roch/Getty Images; 64r Martin Harvey/Getty Images; 65a Helovi/istock; 65b IndiaPictures/UIG via Getty Images); 66a Peter Kindersley/Getty Images; 66b Siri Stafford/Getty Images; 67l adisa/istock; 67r dmaroscar/istock;

71a www.sacredgin.com; 71b www.jensensgin.com;

83 www.beefeatergin.com; 111 www.plymouthgin.com;

116 www.sipsmith.com; 118 AL Heddderly/Getty Images;

119 www.southwesterndistillery.com;

133b www.caorunngin.com; 134 www.caorunngin.com;

139-142 Courtesy of the Diageo Archive. www.diageo.com;

144 uk.hendricksgin.com; 149 www.thebotanist.com;

152-153 Citadelle Gin; 162 Courtesy of Tristan Stephenson;

163 www.hernogin.com; 164 www.monkey47.com; 166 Dennis Tamse noletdistillery.com; 167 Courtesy of Tristan Stephenson;

174 l www.housespirits.com; 177 www.housespirits.com;

180 www.leopoldbros.com; 183 Edwin Tuyay/Bloomberg via Getty Images

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE HISTORY OF GIN

HOW GIN IS MADE

THE GIN TOUR

GIN COCKTAILS

GLOSSARY OF DISTILLERIES

GLOSSARY

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Even before I was old enough to drink gin, I was thinking about it. My earliest memory of gin is my mother drinking a gin and tonic when I was nine, and, as it looked like a glass of lemonade, I thought it only right that I should be allowed one too. Even today I am known to react badly when refused a gin and tonic so my parents pacified me with a glass of tonic water. From the first sip I fell in love with its tongue-curling bitterness and that night I sneaked down to the kitchen and greedily swigged straight from a bottle. It would be a few more years before I could mix it with gin of course, but there was never any question that this heavenly mix of the sweet, bitter, boozy and botanical would become a big feature in my adult life.

Of course I never would have guessed that it would become this much of a feature. The most significant step was becoming a bartender, but when I got better at that I found myself delivering seminars on gin and judging gin competitions. Later, I appeared in advertising for a major gin brand, and opened two London cocktail bars – both heavily inspired by gin. After that I co-founded a (small) gin brand, and now I’ve written a gin book, having visited over 60 gin distilleries and sampled nearly 500 expressions. You could say I’m ‘ginfatuated’.

And for good reason, too. In gin we have a spirit that is so specific in its flavouring, so chilling in its reputation, yet so far-reaching in its contribution to cocktails and mixed drinks.

From its origins as a medieval medicinal curative to becoming one of the world’s first recreational spirits, gin, and its Dutch precursor, genever, soon became the go-to tipple for the British masses in the early 18th century. To say that party got out of hand would be playing it down somewhat. Juniper-scented gut-rot flowed through the streets of London, leading the poor and vulnerable into harm’s way. But out of the ashes, something unexpected happened, and in the space of 100 years, gin journeyed from the backstreet bar rooms of London’s inner-city slums to the cocktail lists of the most exclusive hotels in the world. Indeed, gin was the cocktail spirit, engulfing whiskey and brandy in a cloud of juniper-scented smoke by the beginning of the 20th century. Hundreds of dry gin cocktails were masterminded between 1900–1930. Not least of all, the Martini.

Who could have guessed that in the 50 years that followed gin’s fortunes would change once again, fading away in to mediocrity becoming neither celebrated nor feared, but just unremarkable. The 1980s saw some of gin’s most woeful times, where the cocktails of the golden era had been forgotten only to be replaced by vodka and a new era of cocktail culture where the concealment of a spirit’s character through liberal use of sugar and fruit was the primary goal. Only gin’s loyalest disciples kept the gin dream alive. Refusing to part company with their gin and tonics, keeping the fire burning and the ice stirring from bar room to home liquor cabinet.

Gin, as it stands today, occupies a curious position within the hearts and minds of drinkers. On the one hand there is ‘mother’s ruin’, the degenerative scourge of 18th century English men and women, which has resonated through the centuries. On the other hand, though, gin has become a highly prized pinup of the craft revolution. Eschewing gin today is like sticking a finger up to local, artisan, independent businesses.

But the range of styles has also helped to a garner new admirers too. Assume the barstool position in any bar with a decent gin range and it won’t be long until you hear that familiar sentence, ‘I didn’t used to like gin, but I like this one’, signifying a new breed of gin drinker whose preconceptions have been squashed like a wedge of fresh lime. Pronounced flavour, credible provenance, botanical terroir and innovative packaging are just some of considerations that drive modern gin drinkers to buy one brand over another. This isn’t just a renaissance of gin that we are experiencing right now – it’s gin’s golden time. Gin has never been this good and it might never be this good again, so enjoy it while you can, and be sure to enjoy this book with your gin drink of choice firmly in your hand.

THE HISTORY OF GIN

ALCHEMY, MAGIC AND THE ORIGINS OF DISTILLATION

Some scholars believe that it was the Chinese who first unearthed the secrets of distillation and that their findings were shared with Persian, Babylonian, Arabian and Egyptian merchants through centuries of trade along the old silk routes that penetrated in to the Middle East. These 3,200-km (2,000-mile) trails became well established in the 2nd century BC, and were used to trade gold, jade, silk and spices. However, it was as a hub of cultural networking that the silk route really came in to its own. It was, in effect, the information superhighway of its time.

Whether the Chinese got the know-how from the Indo-Iranian people, or the other way around, the mystic of ardent waters and botanical vapours was seething up in to the classical civilizations, where the preeminent physicians, alchemists and botanists took great interest in it.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle was certainly aware of distillation in one shape or another. One section of his Meteorologica (circa 340 BC) concerns experiments that he undertook to distil liquids, discovering that “wine and all fluids that evaporate and condense in to a liquid state become water.”

In 28 BC a practising magi known as Anaxilaus of Thessaly was expelled from Rome for performing his magical arts, which included setting fire to what appeared to be water. The secrets of the trick were later translated in to Greek and published in around 200 AD by Hippolytus, presbyter of Rome – it turned out he used distilled wine. Around the same time our old friend Pliny the Elder experimented with hanging fleeces above cauldrons of bubbling resin, and using the expansive surface area of the wool to catch the vapour and condense it in to turpentine. Could Pliny have experimented with juniper distillates? Perhaps. But if he did, he didn’t tell us.

The world’s first self-proclaimed alchemist, Zosimos, an Gnostic mystic from Egypt, was also thought to be somewhat of a wizard with alcohol. He provided one of the first definitions of alchemy as the study of ‘the composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the spirits from bodies and bonding the spirits within bodies.’ It was Zosimos’ belief that distillation in some way liberates the essence of a body or object that has lead to our definition of alcoholic beverages as ‘spirits’ today.

The first alembic stills designed by Zosimos of Panoplis use the same basic design as those made today.

Up and until at least 900 AD these studies in spirit and alcohol were confined to the Middle East. Europe was still wallowing in a kind of post-Roman Empire hangover that had been dragging on for the better part of half a millennium. And while the Europeans passed the time burning witches and sharpening steel, Islam erected the Great Mosques of Damascus and Samarra, and bred scholars and scientists. Under the ruling of the caliphate Muslim borders expanded, and so too did schools of mathematics, alchemy and medicine. During that time Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan (who in time became known simply as Geber) emerged, in what stands as modern day Iraq, as the undisputed father of distillation. It was the research and observations of Geber that established the fundamental understanding of distillation throughout Islamic culture.

With knowledge came power, the Moors (a Muslim group from north Africa) persistently and systematically seized big chunks of southern Europe from the 8–9th centuries: Spain, Portugal, parts of southern France and Malta all fell to a force that was superior in every way.

In the 11th century the Europeans began to claw their way back however. Ranks were formed, the Catholic church rallied, and very slowly the ‘Reconquista’ groaned in to action. But this was a lengthy process, leaving some cities, like Toledo in Spain, under Muslim occupation for over 300 years. Once the Europeans moved in and noticed the rather impressive libraries, and the surprisingly well-educated people that inhabited the lands they had seized, the thirst for education and enlightenment became the new focus.

Universities of learning were established and one of them, Schola Medica Salernitana, in Salerno, Italy, would play an important role in the development of distillation. At that time the Principality of Salerno covered almost the entire western coast of southern Italy. Salerno had unprecedented access to Arabic materials thanks to regular interaction with the Byzantines (who liked nothing better than warring with the Arabs and Ottomans) but more importantly the Moors, who occupied Sicily from 902 AD through to the end of the 11th century, and regular skirmishes on to the Italian mainland would have taken them right up to the doorstep of Schola Medica Salernitana.

One of the school’s primary functions was translation work from Arabic or Greek in to Latin. Arabic or Hebrew would be translated into Castilian by Muslim and Jewish scholars, and from Castilian into Latin by Castilian scholars. Knowledge blossomed. The scholars of antiquity who presided over this, Johannes Platearius, Bartholomew and Michael Salernus, outputted reams of material during the school’s golden era, and within the dense volumes of their work we find the first inquisitions in to distillation by Europeans. One recipe book of herbal treatments, which was originally compiled by Platearius at some point in the 12th century, even includes a recipe for a tonic distilled from wine mixed with squashed juniper berries.

For the curious 12th century physician there was no better place to hone your craft than Salerno’s medical school.

The 1529 book Geberi Philosophi ac Alchimistae Maximi, de Alchimia Libri Tres features the works of pioneering alchemist Geber.

THE HISTORY OF MEDICINAL JUNIPER

Juniper has consistently been one of the most widely used trees in the whole of human history. It was essential to the survival of some primitive cultures who used the wood as a material to construct shelter, or shaped it in to utensils, weapons and furniture, or who simply burned it to provide heat and light. Societies have fed themselves with juniper (some Native American tribes were known to consume juniper berries in something resembling a fried juniper burger – I wouldn’t advise trying it) and even the Bible makes reference to juniper as food, in Job (30:4) the King describes the desperation of his impoverished subjects as they ‘cut up juniper roots for meat’. It lends itself better to being sustenance for livestock, and juniper is widely grown for decoration and landscaping purposes, and is a firm favourite of the bonsai tree-growing community.

THE WONDER-DRUG OF THE UNDEVELOPED WORLD

But juniper’s greatest value has always been in its medicinal properties, where it has been held in high regard by medicine men and women for as long as medicine has been documented.

The Zuni of New Mexico would burn twigs of juniper then infuse them in to hot water, making a kind of tea that was administered as a relaxant to pregnant women during labour. The Canadian Cree made a tea from the root of the plant, while the Micmac and Malachite tribes (also of Canada) used juniper for sprains, wounds, tuberculosis, ulcers and rheumatism. The Shoshone boiled a tea from the berries and used it to treat kidney and bladder infections.

The Guna People, who occupy the San Blas Islands off the East coast of Panama, would smear ground-up juniper berries all over their bodies to fend of parasitic cat fish that would attack them when they went swimming, ironically, to catch fish.

In traditional Chinese medicine juniper is prescribed to tackle urinary infections and indeed any discomfort or disease centred around the lower or middle abdominal region. In central European folk medicine the oil extracted from the berries was regarded as a cure-all for typhoid, cholera, dysentery, tapeworms and various other afflictions you might associate with the poverty-stricken.

In Medieval times juniper berries were ground down and used as an antibacterial salve, which would be applied to cuts and wounds. For infections of the mouth you might be instructed to chew on juniper berries for a day to ward off microbial infection.

Juniper’s more esoteric uses include its capability of driving-off evil spirits. Icelandic and Nordic tribes would wear sprigs of juniper about their person to protect the bearer from wild animal attacks. Wreaths made from juniper sprigs might also have hung above your door in efforts to protect the household from bad luck. All good shamans should turn to juniper when needing to cleanse or purify an area and drive away misfortune. Burning the leaves, roots, berries or twigs was common amongst Druids too. The Celts had similar ideas, fumigating the sick or possessed with juniper smoke until the subject recovered or died.

The Romans kept some in the their medicine cabinets, too. In the 2nd Century AD the Greco-Roman physician Galen noted that juniper berries ‘cleanse the liver and kidneys, and they evidently thin any thick and viscous juices, and for this reason they are mixed in health medicines.’ Galen had probably ascertained this from Pliny the Elder whose enormous 37-book Naturalis Historia, which is one of the largest pieces of work to have survived the Roman Empire, included an entire volume dedicated to botany, wine and medicine. Pliny mentions juniper 22 times in Naturalis Historia, celebrating the fruit’s effectiveness at dispelling flatulence and stopping coughs, as well as its effectiveness as a diuretic.

Juniper burgers were once all the rage in some native North American communities.

Juniper is one of mankind’s oldest medicines. Alcohol is another…

Cato the Elder is often considered to be the first Roman to have written in Latin. He was an avid juniper grower, too.

Pliny also makes reference to Cato the Elder for juniper-based know-how. Cato (b. 234 BC) was the consummate Roman statesman, an accomplished soldier, as well as a farmer who did a good job at playing doctor to his family and veterinarian to his livestock. If we’re to believe Cato, a vineyard was the best sort of agricultural estate to possess, but even better if you can use that wine to make medicine. He lists a lot of botanical recipes in his book De Agri Cultura ‘On Agriculture’ (c. 160 BC) mostly derived from his garden such as hellebore and myrtle, one recipe however is for a wine-based juniper infusion used to cure gout and urinary infections. Cato lived to the ripe old age of 85, an achievement that many attribute to his fondness for his self-prescribed farm tonics.

The oldest reference to juniper’s use as a medicine takes us back almost 4,000 years, to Ancient Egypt. A number of important medical scrolls were written between 1800-1500 BC, including the Eber Papyrus and the Kahun Papyrus, the latter of which is the earliest known medical text in existence. Many of these treatments relied on a healthy measure of magic, chanting, or some very unusual ingredients (e.g. cat’s fat), so suffice to say that they are not all as firmly rooted in scientific principle as each other. Juniper was used to treat digestive ailments, soothe chest pains and soothe stomach cramps. The Eber Papyrus lists a recipe that is used to treat tapeworms that calls for ‘juniper berries five parts, white oil five parts, taken for one day.’

THE SPICE TRADE AND THE ORIGINS OF JUNIPER SPIRITS

When the distillation of wine was first discovered by European alchemists, the fiery, volatile liquid that emanated from the alembic still was dubbed aqua vitae (water of life). It was genuinely believed by Arnaldus de Villa Nova, a 13th-century professor from the University of Montpellier and the godfather of medical chemistry, to be a cure for mortality: ‘We call it aqua vitae, and this name is remarkably suitable, since it really is the water of immortality. It prolongs life, clears away ill-humours, strengthens the heart, and maintains youth.’

The knowledge of distillation steadily disseminated through Europe, via monasteries and new-fangled universities, evolving in to regional variants, made from barley, grapes, rye and wheat. Over the coming centuries these distillates would graduate in to the spirit categories of whisky, brandy and vodka that we recognize today.

This 1506 engraving depicts the alchemist and astrologer Arnaldus de Villa Nova picking grapes for wine.

At some point, probably in the early 13th century, aqua vitae arrived in the Low Countries, an area comprising 17 individual states covering modern-day Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of France and Germany. At that time the Low Countries were enjoying a prosperous period. Towns were designed and built from scratch, rather than being bodged together from existing settlements. Canals and waterways provided a broad and efficient trade network for goods and materials. The city of Antwerp, in its centre, was fast becoming a spiritual and intellectual hub, and by the middle of the 1400s, it was the richest city in Europe.

The population swelled as a result and it didn’t take long for physicians, chemists and Cistercian monks to begin documenting the newest and trendiest findings in the world of science and alchemy. One of the earliest of these comes from Der Naturen Bloeme by Jacob van Maerlant. Published in 1269. This work was a translation of a slightly earlier volume of books titled Opus de Natura Rerum (A Collection of Natural Occurrences) – by a theologian called Thomas de Cantimpré, who was born in 1201.

Spread over twenty volumes, and written entirely in rhyme, it took de Cantimpré fifteen years to write what was, at the time, probably the most exhaustive text on natural history in existence. An entire volume of the text is dedicated to medicinal plants and their various uses, and included within that is provision for boiled rainwater or wine containing juniper berries, used to treat stomach pain.

By the end of the 14th century, juniper wines and spirits were stocked in the medical cabinets of any physician worth their salt. A 1578 translation of Rembert Dodoens’ A Nievve Herbal (A History of Plants) celebrates the juniper berry’s properties as ‘good for the stomacke, lunges, liver and kidneys: it cureth the olde cough, the “gripinges” and “windinesse of the belly”, and “provoketh brine”’. The passage finishes with instructions, ‘to be boiled in wine or honied water and dronken’. Thanks to books like Constelijck Distilleerboet, by Phillip Hermanni, an Antwerp-based physician, the knowledge required to make these spirits was in the public domain. Hermanni’s ‘distillation for doctors’ handbook included a recipe for geneverbessenwater (juniper berry water) that saw the berries crushed, sprinkled with wine, and distilled in an alembic pot still. Hermanni goes on to describe how the liquid can be used for digestive disorders, colds, plague and to treat bites from venomous animals.

The 14th century also saw the first murmurings of a very important and necessary (for the purposes of this book) shift in the way that spirits were perceived and consumed. The first example of this in the Low Countries (where we would soon see the birth of genever) comes from a manuscript written by Flemish alchemist Johannes van Aalter, in 1351. The text was copied from an earlier piece, the author unknown, but the lucid appraisal of alcohol’s social effects is quite uncanny: “It makes people forget human sorrow and makes the heart glad and strong and courageous.”

For a well-motivated 15th-century alcoholic, spirits would soon become a quick and easy route to inebriation. By flavouring these aqua vitae, one could mask some of that rough-hewn temperament, offering a delicious in-road into botanical spirits. The fact that many of these so-called botanicals were also endowed with impressive medicinal benefits was just an added bonus. A change was clearly afoot and all the cogs were beginning to align.

The only problem now was that many of these fruits and spices were still quite expensive. Nutmeg, for example, was worth more than its weight in gold, and many of these products could only get to you via the complex spice trade routes that ran through the Middle East in to Europe via Constantinople and Venice. When the Ottoman Empire took control of Constantinople in 1453 they imposed huge levies on spices that passed through the city. It was demand for these spices (ginger, cassia, cardamom and pepper) that triggered the age of discovery, as European nations were forced to find new routes over sea to the sources of these commodities. They were incredibly expensive for an average European to purchase however, and any access outside of medical circles was rare and really only the preserve of the rich and powerful, which is what makes the next part of the story so incredible.

The complex process of distillation as depicted in the 1519 book, Liber de Arte Distillandi, Simplicia et Composita.

Aided by good town planning, Antwerp was Europe’s most prosperous city in the 15th century.

THE BIRTH OF GENEVER

In 1495 a wealthy merchant from a region known as the Duchy of Guelders (now a part of The Netherlands, near Arnhem) decided it would be a good idea to have a book written for him. Being a household guide, the book documented some of the lavish recipes he and his family were enjoying at the time. Included was a brandy recipe made from ‘10 quarts of wine thinned with clear hamburg beer.’ After distillation the liquid would be redistilled with ‘two handfuls of dried sage, 1lb of cloves, 12 whole nutmegs, cardamom, cinnamon, galangal, ginger, grains of paradise’ and – crucially – ‘juniper berries.’ The spices were placed in a cloth sack and suspended above the distillate, allowing the vapours to extract their flavour. Grinding diamonds over white truffle is as close a comparison as I can imagine to expressing the extravagance of such a recipe during that period. It’s for this reason that it’s highly unlikely that the drink was intended for anything other than sinful pleasures.

This was the dawn of a new era of spirits, where recreational delight superseded medicinal comfort. Juniper was cheap, readily available and tasty. It quickly assumed its modern role and became the poster-boy for the flavoured spirits movement.

This reproduction of a copper engraving shows the sack of Antwerp by Spanish forces on 4th November 1576.

LAWS & WARS

The early 16th century saw consecutively poor grape harvests in the Low Countries that lasted over two decades. The price of wine went up, so distillers turned to beer instead. The fermented grain mash of rye and malted barley quickly became known as moutwijn (malt wine) and its distillate, korenbrandewijn (grain burnt wine), which was later shortened down to korenwijn – a term that is useful to know when navigating genever styles. In English it’s a common mistake to associate korenwijn with corn, but it can in fact be made from any cereal, and would not have been made with corn until at least the 1880s.

Any flavoured spirit made from flavoured korenwijn would adopt the name of its chief ingredient to avoid any confusion as to what it was. It’s not known who first used the term genever (the French word for juniper) or if indeed anyone prior to 1495 had experimented with it. The van Dale dictionary, The Netherlands’ equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary, first listed the word (in reference to the drink) in 1672, but production of juniper spirits in Holland and Belgium had already been galvanized some 100 years prior to that.

The 16th century was a tumultuous time for the Low Countries. The year 1568 marked the beginning of what would later be known as the 80-years war. In the briefest of summaries, the war was a Protestant uprising centred around the Low Countries and aimed at their then sovereign ruler, Spain. During the considerable period over which the war lasted the city of Antwerp was eviscerated of its populous, as its panic-stricken residents fled to the north, to France, to neighbouring German cities, or to the safer towns of Hasselt and Weesp. Some 6,000 Flemish Protestants had already fled to London by 1570, paving the way for the genever/gin boom that followed later. The fall of Antwerp in 1585 is seen by many as the turning point in relations between the northern and southern Low Countries, drawing a line in the sand between the areas that would one day form the Netherlands and Belgium.

Consistent with most wars of the era, next, inevitably, came a ban on distilling from fruit or cereal, imposed in 1601 by a government dealing with a very apparent national food shortage. The ban wouldn’t be lifted until 1713, a full 112 years later. But the dictate was not recognized in the north, so for a down-on-his-luck distiller the northern towns posed a tempting prospect. As the south was torn apart, the new Dutch Republic in the north accepted swarms of skilled refugees from Antwerp, laying down the foundations of the ‘Dutch Golden Age’.

EMERGENCE OF AN INDUSTRY

Many of the fresh-off-the-cart brewers and distillers gravitated towards Schiedam, a neighbouring city to Rotterdam, and a place whose name would become synonymous with spirits production over the next 200 years. Included amongst the folk on the move was a Flemish family by the name of Bols (meaning ‘arrow’), who fled to Cologne initially, then eventually settled just outside of Amsterdam in 1575. They set up a distillery called ’t Lootsje (‘the little shed’) and began making spiced spirits and liqueurs. Later, in 1664, they added genever to their portfolio. Bols is now the oldest spirits brand in the world.

Amsterdam gratefully took on the mantle of Europe’s premier trading port and in 1602 the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) was founded. More a roving nation than a business, the VOC would soon become the biggest company in the world, and with over 30,000 employees spread across the globe, the world’s first multi-national corporation. The VOC traded in everything: spices, precious metals, tea, coffee, cotton, textiles and sugar. It also minted its own currency, waged wars, imprisoned slaves and established colonies. It turned Holland into a 17th-century superpower. Genever travelled to all the four corners of the world and was used for trading, or just to provide a familiar taste of home. Most Dutch sailors were entitled to between 150-200 ml (5–7 fl. oz) of genever every day. In the colonies it was popular too, where residents would down soopjes (shots) of colloquially named proto-cocktails, like papegaaiensoep (parrot soup), hap snert (bite of pea soup) and dikop (fat head).

The fable of Dr. Sylvius

Franciscus Sylvius de la Boe was a professor of medicine at Leiden University, Holland, between 1658 and 1672. During his time at the University, Sylvius cooked up no small quantity of juniper-based tonics, and prior to that he had worked as a plague doctor, where juniper had no doubt featured in his arsenal of preventive remedies. It’s fair to say that Dr. Sylvius is historically one of juniper’s most reliable advocates. Nowadays, however, he is widely and erroneously credited as the man who invented genever.

There are plenty of reasons why Sylvius couldn’t possibly have been the inventor of genever, or juniper spirits. The previous pages of this very book can attest to the preliminary work of such things having taken place years before Sylvius appeared on the scene. The fact that Sylvius was only born in 1614 – late enough to have entirely missed the Flemmish spirits boom of the 16th century – should be proof enough, but just to be sure, it’s worth pointing out genever was never mentioned in any of his surviving research, nor was he ever cited more than once regarding his distilling expertise. Oh, and did I mention he was German, born in Hanover?

Case closed.

Spirits were stored by the barrel back then, meaning that all of the spirits distributed abroad, and most of those drunk at home, would have undergone some degree of barrel ageing. This would place them closer in style to a light whisky than a modern-day gin.

With the trade network established genever production in Holland boomed. Schiedam had 37 distilleries at the beginning of the 17th century, but it was more like 250 by the turn of the next. By the 1880s, there would be nearly 400 and the industry was employing over three-quarters of the city’s 6,000 residents in milling, malting, brewing, distilling and barrelling. Twenty enormous windmills were the backbone of the Schiedam spirits machine, grinding the huge volumes of cereal that entered the city, piled high on Dutch flute boats that navigated along the gridlocked river Nieuwe Maas. The tallest and widest windmills in the world were all in Schiedam at that time (a fact that remains to this day) grossly miss-proportioned in their efforts to capture their share of the city’s breeze.

Genever advertising during the boom times was often garish, rarely subtle, and usually fun.

The Dutch first arrived in Indonesia in 1596 and six years later established the Dutch East India Company to exploit the lucrative spice trade.

But the slick sheen of well a well-oiled industry also concealed a grave defilement of the city and its people. The coal-field distilleries polluted the air and died the city black – awarding Schiedam its label as the ‘Black Nazareth’ – off-spill from the still’s condensers poisoned the water. And what with all that booze, alcoholism ensued, perpetuated by the squalid living conditions and low pay received by the distillery workers. Schiedam became a sprawling workhouse of industry, bolstered by a new global demand for genever.

Five original windmills can still be seen in Schiedam today. They are the five largest windmills in the world (the biggest, De Noord, is 33.3 m (110 ft) high) and have recently been joined by a sixth windmill that was rebuilt in 2011 on the site of an original 1715 mill.

THE FASHIONABLE LONDON DRINK

The Dutch-born William of Orange (William III) arrived in England in 1688. His seizure of crown was a surprisingly peaceful affair in an otherwise bloody period of history. In fact parliament more or less propped the door open for him. The man he ousted, James II, the last Roman Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms, was very much in the dog house as far as popular opinion went. Dethroned and desolate, James skulked off to Catholic France, and all things French became deeply uncool.

William’s first act as King was to declare war on France, which included banning the import of French brandy outright. William also lowered taxes on cereals, earning him a big ‘thumbs-up’ from the landed gentry who owned most of the countryside, and loosened up the laws concerning distilling to encourage more people to buy home-grown grains. It was a wicked cocktail of policies and the result, as with any good cocktail, was total inebriation.

It’s for the reasons above, along with William’s Dutch origins, that he is often credited as the man responsible for making genever (and gin) fashionable in England. William’s relaxing of the rules meant that more or less anyone could bag themselves a distilling licence with nothing more than an administration fee and ten days to see if anyone objected. Of course ‘King Billy’ (as he was known to the Scots) never intended the outright anarchy that ensued (he wouldn’t live to see the worst of it) and to some extent he achieved what he set out to, but in the process condemned London to sixty years of drunken carnage.

But gin, or as it was still known then, genever, was already reasonably well established in London before William came along, in fact it was doing quite alright before William’s father was born, too. Distillation was not as widespread in England as other European countries like the Low Countries, but had long been the preserve of curious monks and crackpot alchemists as far back as the 14th century. Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1534 forced great numbers of the well-informed monks from the sanctuary of their chapels out into the badlands of civilisation. Many of these learned men developed trades in activities consistent with their previous monastic practices: carpentry, weaving textiles, baking bread, brewing beer and distilling spirits. One hundred years after Henry VIII founded the Church of England there were over 200 distilleries in London.

London’s lust for gin was in place before William III’s accession. But his policies lit the fuse that ignited the gin explosion.

It was during the Eighty Years War (1568–1648) that juniper spirits would have first appeared in London taverns. In December 1585, Elizabeth I sent 6000 armed men to the Low Countries to provide support against Spanish forces. They failed to suppress the Fall of Antwerp, but during their time travelling and fighting alongside their Dutch comrades the English noticed the Dutch men partook in a certain strange ritual. This took the form of small bottles on their belts, like hip flasks, which they would customarily swig back before wading in to the battle. The English observed the courage exhibited by their Dutch compatriots, later coining the term ‘Dutch Courage’. It wouldn’t be the last time that the Dutch and English fought side by side. During the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), which was one of the bloodiest and nastiest in European history, the English and Dutch troops once again fought side by side in opposition to Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. On that occasion it’s quite likely that both the English and the Dutch were knocking back bottles of ‘courage’.

As is consistent with other parts of Europe, juniper spirits were also a favourite of English doctors and physicians. Gervase Markham’s 1615 guide to household management, The English Housewife, included a recipe for eyedrops that featured juniper, fennel and gromwell seeds. London’s pre-eminent 17th-century chronicler, Samuel Pepys, wrote in 1663 that he had been advised by a friend to take ‘strong water made from juniper’ to cure a severe case of constipation.

But one of the earliest and perhaps improbable sources of early juniper spirits in England terminated not from the physicians table, but the kitchen table. Sir Hugh Plat (inventor and sometime hero of the housewife) published Delightes For Ladies, in 1602, which included a whole section dedicated to recipes for distilling in the home. One recipe, for a drink called ‘Spirits of Spices’ calls for ‘cloves, mace, nutmegs, juniper, rosemary’ in no specific quantities. This was mixed with ‘strong and sweet water’ then distilled over a bain marie or hot ashes. The result? According to Plat you can hope for a ‘delicate spirit of each of the said aromatical bodies.’ If we resist being too critical of the recipe, Plat’s ‘Spirits of Spices’ could be regarded as England’s first proto-gin.

This etching shows spirit drinking and pipe smoking in 17th-century Holland. The liquor wasn’t to everyone’s tastes, as the chap on the right would attest to.

GIN AT THE TURN OF THE 18TH CENTURY

While the likes of Plat and Markham served a purpose, at least as far as the enterprising housewife was concerned, England was in dire need of some practical instruction relating to the art of distillation. It arrived (almost exactly as requested) in 1692, in the form of The Whole Art of Distillation Practically Stated, by William Y-Worth. Y-Worth, an immigrant from Holland, made no bones about it: his was the only credible work concerning distillation available. Sadly, only one recipe in the entire book uses juniper, and the spirit is intended for medicinal purposes.

Following Y-Worth’s book, The Distiller of London by Thomas Cademan was published in 1698. This distilling manual was actually a private handbook for London’s Worshipful Company of Distillers. As a Livery Company of the City of London, this group was founded in 1638 to oversee and regulate the production of spirits in London. Caveman’s book is an important one, because it lists a number of recipes (by number rather than name) which include juniper, and some where juniper is the chief ingredient. The recipes are often extravagant, incorporating expensive imported spices (such as nutmeg and cloves), dried citrus peels and fresh berries. They were labour-intensive too, but the eventual outcome would have been a product of exceptional quality for the period.

As the gin craze began to kick hard (page 23) things began to turn sour. The books that followed approached the subject of juniper and genever more cautiously. Ambrose Cooper’s The Compleat Practical Distiller (1757) includes a simple recipe for gin that calls for ‘three pounds of juniper berries, proof spirit ten gallons, water four gallons’ which is distilled in the classic way.

The law meant it was cheap and easy to buy alcohol, and not difficult to produce some imitation genever. A lack of distilling expertise lead to the gin makers casually disregarding Dutch genever practices (including the all-important malt wine) and focus on infusing poorly-made neutral alcohol with botanicals, the latter to mask the impure and unpleasant flavour of the neutral spirits. Gin became as cheap as beer, but packed a much bigger punch. In time, the botanicals too would be considered an unnecessary expense.

In Cooper’s book he also informs the reader that the ‘common sort of gins’ are made using oil of turpentine, a compound extracted from pine tree resin that bears some resemblance to the piney aroma of juniper. He seems more confused than disgusted by the this practice adding that, ‘it is surprising that people should accustom themselves to drinking it for pleasure.’

‘Common Gin’ or ‘Gineva’ production was a two-part process in your average slum setup. No-one distilled their own spirit from scratch, so it first had to be bought in from a larger distillery. These distilleries would take beer and run it through pot stills a couple of times to make ‘proof spirit’. This was a time before the continuous still had been invented, so the proof spirit would not be entirely neutral in its character, but quite likely entirely awful. A large chunk of this proof spirit came from Scotland, where the game was to run your still as fast as possible, heedless of any negative effects it might have to the taste or safety of your spirit.

Once the proof spirit arrived at your door, all that was left was to flavour it. The gentry were all drinking imported genever, so the smart move would have been to hash together some pseudo-genever of your own. Unfortunately botanicals were seen as time-wasting and expensive. Far better to compound salts, acids and toxic extracts in to your product, right? One gin recipe from the 1740s from the firm of Beaufoy, James and Co., doesn’t even mention juniper: ‘Oil of vitriol, oil of almonds, oil of turpentine, spirits of wine, lamp sugar, lime water, rose water, alum, salt of tartar.’

It was gin that fuelled the gin craze, but in its guise as inexpensive fire water, consumed without restraint. Not the aromatically balanced botanical spirit that we recognize gin as today.

It might have tasted bad, but that didn’t stop tenacious types knocking it back. But not everyone swigged straight from the flagon. Mixing gin with sweet cordials, like peppermint or lovage, took the edge off and made a kind of pseudo-liqueur. Another one of the more popular ways of drinking gin was with a side helping of gingerbread. Ginger really was the flavour of London in the early 18th century (along with gin of course) largely thanks to colonies in India and the Caribbean doing a damn fine job of growing the stuff. This made ginger comparatively cheap compared to other spices and stalls selling fermented ginger beer lined many of the traditional market streets of London, like Petticoat Lane. In 1740 Joseph Stone, a prominent spice merchant based on High Holborn, loaned his name to the Finsbury Distillery Company, and Stone’s Green Ginger Wine was born. But it was perhaps in the form of gingerbread, coupled with a measure of warm gin, that ginger truly excelled itself. When the Thames froze over and there was little else to do, other than spectate over executions and get drunk, it was gin and spiced gingerbread that filled a Londoner’s belly.

When the River Thames froze over in 1814, you can bet that Londoners turned to gin and gingerbread to warm themselves up.

An 18th-century gingerbread seller displays his wares on the streets of Mayfair.

THE BROKEN PROMISE

Britain’s grand conquests abroad made London an enticing prospect for starry-eyed immigrants. But on their arrival in to London’s docks reality would have hit quite hard. Those who brought a trade with them stood some small chance of a normal, honest existence. Those who didn’t found themselves forcefully strained through convoluted layers of bedlam and poverty, coming to rest, broken and dejected, only once they reached the guts of one of London’s inner-city slums. And it would be in the slums that ‘gin’ would rally its forces. It would be the sympathizer to the impoverished, and would lead to ruin for all of those who went near it.

THE GIN CRAZE

The word ‘gin’ didn’t appear in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1714. Defined as ‘an infamous liquor’ it had clearly made its mark already. During the early days of the ‘craze’ gin was known as geneva or ‘Madame Geneva’. Probably no coincidence that gin’s entry in to the dictionary coincided with Bernard Mandeville’s ‘Fable of the Bees’, a poem that was published in 1705, followed by a book, which first appeared in 1714. In his frank and detailed description of London’s various vices and corruptions Mandeville gives us one of the earliest insights in to gin as a purely ruinous force, as well as one of the earliest uses of the word ‘gin’.

‘Nothing is more destructive, either in regard to the Health or the Vigilance and Industry of the Poor than the infamous Liquor, the name of which, deriv’d from Junipera in Dutch, is now by frequent use and the laconic spirit of the nation, from a word of middling length shrunk into a monosyllable, intoxicating GIN’.

Slowly at first but gathering pace, the overconsumption of gin became endemic, far removed from the blithe alcoholism associated with beer and wine, it was perceived by those lucky enough to escape its clutches as perfectly abhorrent. Gin was the widespread social drug of the time that preyed on the poor and vulnerable, gutting London from the inside out. Dr Stephen Hales, an anti-gin campaigner wrote in 1734 that ‘Man, has unhappily found means to extract, from what God intended for his refreshment, a most pernicious and intoxicating liquor.’ In the 1730s around five million gallons of raw spirits were being distilled in London every year, and less than 10% of it would ever leave the city.

The population of London as a whole was relatively stagnant between 1725 and 1750, but this was only due to the steady influx of migrants. The death rate in London during the mid-1700s exceeded the birth rate. In the worst areas, a newborn had less than an 80% chance of making it to the age of two. Many families were forced to live in single rooms in ramshackle tenements or in damp cellars, with no sanitation or fresh air. Drinking water was often contaminated by raw sewage and garbage was left rotting in the street. Problems with the disposal of the dead often added to the stench and decay. Many London graveyards became full to capacity, and coffins were sometimes left partially uncovered in ‘poor holes’ close to local houses and businesses. It’s little wonder that the poor turned to gin as a release from the hardships of survival.

Imagine every single newsagent, store, supermarket and street vendor in central London turning their hand to selling gin. Then imagine that it’s cheaper than bread or milk and that anyone can buy it: violent drunks, the elderly and infirm, children. Finally, imagine that it’s not only highly addictive, but poisonous, laced with added ‘flavour-enhancing’ properties that when consumed in large quantities cause blindness, death or the loss of one’s mind.

It’s easy to imagine widespread turmoil throughout the entire city, but ‘dramming’ was really only centred around the poorest districts. In 1700 London had a population of 575,000, which made it the largest metropolis in Europe. While the residents of St Giles got drunk for (literally) a penny, the city could press on with business as usual, preoccupied and only vaguely aware of the horrors taking place around the corner. Gentleman, politicians, merchants and scholars wouldn’t venture in to fleshpots of Holborn or Shoreditch. They would meet in nearby Cornhill to drink coffee and discuss politics, trade, the colonies, science or poetry. Perhaps some might have indulged in glass of gin on occasion, but it would be imported Holland’s Gin, not the ghastly stuff produced in some squalid basement. The single biggest reason that the gin craze lasted so long and its effects were so brutal is ignorance of the upper classes to what was taking place under their noses.

If the gin craze was a storm then the area of St Giles in the Fields, near Charing Cross Road, was the centre of the deluge. Renowned as one of the country’s biggest slums, for the 20,000 people living there gin was a simple, cheap and accessible solution to all of their problems.

As you might expect, there is no shortage of harrowing stories from the period. As a researcher it becomes a macabre process of selection, sifting through the fallout and singling out the accounts that best represent the grim horror of the gin craze. William Hogarth’s ‘Gin Lane’ etching might seem like a grizzly exaggeration of events, but the true plight of the people embroiled in the gin craze was perhaps even worse than his famous depiction (see right).

One of the most disturbing and notorious tales from the period is of Judith Dufour. In 1734 Dufour deposited her unclothed two-year-old daughter, Mary, at the workhouse where she was employed, then returned the following day to claim her. Now fully clothed, she stripped the child of her clothes, then strangled her to death, dumped her body in a ditch. She then sold the clothes for 1 shilling and 4 pence and used her earnings to buy gin.

Spare a thought too for Joseph Barret – a 42-year-old labourer, who was hanged in 1728 for beating his son to death. Barret’s final confession is a harrowing account of how his son (James) spent his days begging for money and his nights ‘drinking until he appeared worse than a beast, quite out of his senses.’ Barret apparently had ‘no evil intention’ and planned only to ‘reclaim [James] from his wild courses.’ Barret’s punishment was too savage however, and James died in his bed. He was eleven years old.

The ‘Rookery’ in St Giles, in Bloomsbury, London, where the gin flowed like water and where both water and gin were liable to poison you.

While the poor got drunk on gin in the 18th century, the upper classes drank coffee and discussed politics.

By 1751 half of all the British wheat harvest was used to make spirits. There were reportedly 17,000 ‘private gin shops’ in London and almost half of them were in Holborn. That’s approximately one shop for every black cab in Greater London today. And that figure only represents the gin specialists! It doesn’t include all the taverns and public houses that also sold gin by the bucket load. Neither does it include the street markets, grocers, chandlers, barbers, barrows and brothels that also did a roaring trade. Some estimates – and they can really only be estimates – suggest that over 10 million gallons of gin were consumed in London that year. A worthy effort for a population of only 700,000, helped along by the fact that many factory workers were partly paid in gin. Follow the maths down and you’re looking at a pint of gin per week for every single London citizen. The novelist Henry Fielding argued that there would soon be ‘few of the common people left to drink it’ if the situation continued.

GIN LANE

Poets, playwrights and journalists turned their attention to the scourge, publicly voicing their concerns over the parasite that was gnawing at London’s underbelly. It was in 1751 that William Hogarth unveiled his remarkable ‘Gin Lane’ etching. Burdened with ghastly imagery, the scene was designed to shock all who laid eyes on it, serving as a morbid checklist of gin’s capacity to induce social decay, drunkenness, starvation, depression, violence, suicide, infanticide and madness.

The motives behind Gin Lane are a little more convoluted than the simple intentions a respected artist performing a much needed public service. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1748, marked the end of the War of the Austrian Sucession, the upshot of which would see the return of around 80,000 soldiers who had been fighting abroad. That’s a lot of soldiers to feed and water, and knowing the ease with which fighting men could be drawn in to Madam Geneva’s embrace, public tensions were strung tight. Hogarth produced Gin Lane and the sister piece, Beer Street, in response to the public’s demand for another Gin Act (pages 26–27). There have been suggestions that Hogarth was in cahoots with the brewers, and that the pieces were pure propaganda, diverting the masses away from their demon water, and promoting the drinking of good, clean, honest beer. Either way, Gin Lane is the most prominent piece of satire to emerge from the gin craze, and one of the more effective weapons in gin’s undoing.

Gin Lane is certainly worthy of a few minutes’ close inspection, where the most observant amongst you will find countless sub-plots in the wider story of gin’s destructive force. In the foreground we are naturally drawn to the image of the inebriated mother, cheerfully oblivious to the fact that she has dropped her child in favour of a snuff box. In front of her sits a skeletal man, clutching a flagon of gin and a ballad entitled ‘The Downfall of Madam Gin’ – its objective plainly fallen by the wayside. Behind and to the right an elderly woman is fed gin from her position in a barrow, while a pair of St Giles orphans share a dram while people riot outside a gin distillery. The pawnbroker on the left of the scene is doing a roaring trade as the three-sphered sign doubles up as a cross above the distant Bloomsbury church spire. The message is clear: the people of Gin Lane have placed their faith in an altogether different kind of spirit. The middle distance is a picture of more tumultuous behaviour: dilapidation, death, and a man beating himself over the head with a pair of bellows while holding aloft a dead child on a spike. The detail of the composition even stretches to the silhouetted figures of a funeral procession working their way through the rubble at the far end of Gin Lane.

The illustrations of George Cruikshank vilified the gin shops for their role in the moral and physical decay of the lower classes.

THE GIN ACTS

In the 1720s, the government finally took notice of the effect that London gin was having on its poorest inhabitants declaring that ‘the drinking of spirits is… very common among the people of inferior rank and the constant and excessive use thereof tends greatly to the destruction of their healths, enervating them, and rendering them unfit for useful labour and service.’

The first of six Gin Acts, spread across a 30-year period, was made law in 1729, in the wake of the doubling of the spirit’s production in the previous 10 years. The purpose of the First Act was to curb the manufacture and consumption of gin by imposing a higher tax of five shillings per gallon on ‘compound waters’. The price of a retail licence also went up to £20 (US$30), around £1,800 (US$2,670) in today’s money. Targeting the troublesome compounders should have been a good tactic, but the Act failed to deal with the two dozen-or-so distillers who were the ones making the spirit in the first place. It didn’t work. Consumption continued to rise and taxes were left unpaid.

The second Act, in 1733, did away with extra duty on ‘compound waters’ and banned the sale of gin in the street altogether. If you were caught a £10 (US$15) fine would be imposed, and if you assisted in a conviction a £5 (US$7.50) reward would be granted. This was quickly followed by the Third Act, in 1736, which raised the fine for unlicensed retailers to £100 (US$150) and the fine for street-selling to £10 (US$15). The price of a licence more than doubled, to an exorbitant £50 (US$75), and a 20 shilling per gallon tax was applied to gin sold in small quantities. The cost was so extreme that it should have crippled compounding altogether. But only two applications for licences were ever filed. The trick now was not to get caught. Around 4,000 rewards were claimed over the next two years, but known informants were beaten bloody in the streets or thrown into the River Thames. One poor man was ‘set upon an ass’ and paraded down Bond Street while having stones and mud thrown at him.

Enterprising gin sellers developed new and elaborate methods to inconspicuously deliver their payloads to wanting customers. The best example of this is the ‘Puss and Mew’ contraption, pioneered by Dudley Bradstreet. These human-operated gin vending machines were denoted by a wooden carving of a cat on a wall. Those in need of a fix would approach the cat and whisper ‘puss’. If anyone was listening, and gin was available (which it surely was) the response would come back ‘Mew’ to which the patron would place a penny in a drawer and gin would be dispensed out of lead pipe protruding out of the wall.

Soon though the number flouting the law was so tremendous that the time for discretion had passed. The next Act, in 1743, took a different tack. Duty on spirits was raised, but the cost of a licence was slashed to £1 (US$1.50) and the duty on compounded spirits was cut to a fraction of its previous rate. Anti-gin campaigners saw this as surrendering to popular demand but it had the desired effect, with thousands of licences issued over the following years. But this was not just about finding salvation for the lower class, the tax revenue was desperately needed to fund the war effort overseas. As the courtier Lord Hervey put it, ‘This Bill is an experiment of a very daring kind… to find out how far the vices of the population may be made useful to the government [and] what taxes may be raised upon poison.’

In this 1829 etching by George Cruikshank, gin shop patrons don’t realize that ruin, poverty and death surround them.

The Fifth Act became the undoing of the fourth however as, in 1947, the ever-powerful distillers revolted and were granted £5 (US$7.50) licences and the opportunity to sell direct from shops. The effect was clear to see as, in 1950, gin consumption was nearing an all-time high.