Gin

So, who here likes to drink? I assume you do, dear reader, or why else would you spend time reading about a brief history of Gin? If you don’t drink and you are here, well, I don’t get you. Gin is famous for being the base of many cocktails or mixed drinks such as the Martini, the Negroni, the Tom Collins, the Aviation, the French 75, and the GIN and Tonic. Sure the last one in the list probably came to mind first but you can’t start with the easiest, that’s no fun. So, what is Gin? Where does the name come from? And why do people say it tastes like Christmas? Well, I swear, I will answer those questions with this article on Gin.

Gin is a distilled grain spirit flavored with juniper berries and other “botanicals” (basically just a fancy way to say other stuff is in it for flavor). By the way, juniper is where the “Christmas” taste comes from, as many relate it to tasting like pine or evergreen. The name of Gin comes from the ye old English word genever, which derives from the Latin word for Juniper. Juniper has had medical uses for centuries and was supposedly the berries and “fragrant” plants that plague doctors would place at the end of their long beaked plague masks to ward off the miasma (bad air) of the plague. The plague doesn’t spread from bad air by the way, just had to mention that in case you still were under that impression. Juniper wine and spirits were brewed as a tonic by Roman Catholic monks before its official mention in the 13th century. These tonics were used for the next few hundred years as solutions to most ailments (and would get you loaded in the process). Dutch distillers were particularly adept at flavoring Juniper wine and tonics and it became popular throughout the area.

Fast forward to the 16th century, the Eight Years War broke out in the Habsburg Netherlands, and the English got involved to fight one of their old nemeses, the Spanish. While in the Eight Years War, English soldiers started drinking Jenever, an early Dutch version of Gin, although distinctly different from today’s version. Some historians believe this is where the term “Dutch courage” comes from, as the English soldiers would drink to soothe those pre-battle, “I could get killed in the next hour,” jitters. Once the war was over, they brought a taste for Jenever back home. Then, this thing called the “Glorious Revolution” in England happens, where King James II and VII (same guy) of England, Scotland, and Ireland is deposed and replaced by the Dutch Mary II and William III. So, you have a war in the Netherlands, a Dutch King and Queen on the English throne, and English soldiers with a taste for jenever, you get an explosion of popularity for what becomes Gin.

Fast forward again, this time to the 17th century - the British government gets rid of regulation for Gin, slaps tariffs on foreign spirits, leading to a rapid rise in popularity for Gin. This event leads to a fun period in British history called the “Gin Craze.” Gin was cheap compared to other spirits at the time, and humans love to get hammered on cheap booze, so naturally by the mid-1700s, “gin houses” had taken over half of the drinking places in London. Also, because it was cheap, the poorer citizens of Britain really started drinking it, leading the rich to associate it as a lower-class drink as the rich still drank French Brandy. They started attributing wild stories, like women selling their children for a jug of Gin and fathers and men neglecting work to drink all day to an addiction for Gin and other grain spirits, leading for a push to either ban outright or heavily regulate Gin. Numerous “Gin Acts” started to be passed in Britain during the 18th century in an attempt to control its consumption. I must note though, that Gin is also referred to as “a cornerstone of the British Empire” for a lesser-known reason. Gin was used to mix with the drug quinine (used to prevent/treat malaria). Quinine had an especially bitter taste and was distributed to far flung British colonialists, and their armies via tonic water. These colonolists and soliders mixed tonic water with Gin, creating the GIN and Tonic, to get their daily anti-malarial dose. Modern tonic water has significantly less quinine in it than the version a century or two ago but there is still quinine in every Gin and Tonic you consume. Tell that last fact every time someone orders a Gin and Tonic, I swear, you will be popular.

By the 19th Century, other liquors and spirits were able to be acquired throughout the western world, and Gin slid in popularity. At this time, you have a rise in cocktails, Gin being the basis for many, as it was still cheap. By the 1950s, Gin started to fall out of favor with drinkers due to the rise of Vodka but, do not despair, my fellow Gin drinker! Gin is back on the rise, this time with a craft Gin explosion on the market of distilled spirts. The 2010s saw a rise in Gin consumption and in 2021, consumers spent $2.9 billion on Gin at retail.