The Ori-gin

The British have laid claim to many things that have not originated from the native isles, but have been considered equally valid adoptions because they were brought back from British Empire territories, such as curry from India.

In the case of gin, it certainly has a long and interesting history since the English became aware of it, but we have to look to the Dutch for its origins. England and the Dutch were at war three times but were allies against the French and Spanish during the 80 years war.

The early 1600s were turbulant times in Europe and the English noted that Dutch soldiers drank a schnapps called genever for courage. And so the English brought home the Dutch courage, genever.

The words ‘genievre‘ and ‘jenever‘ are the French and Dutch words for juniper. After a time in England the drink became known simply as gin.

The distinction between gins is whether they are distilled or compound. Compound gins take a neutral alcohol and flavour it with botanical ingredients and distilled gins involve adding the botanicals after the first distil and then re-distilling the batch.

As far as the process used to create gin, one of two techniques is used: pot-distilled and column-distilled. Earlier gin used the pot-distilled technique which is regarded as giving the better character and can be aged in barrels like other spirits. Column-distilled gin produces a much more highly concentrated alcohol. Botanicals are placed above the mash and the spirit is re-distilled. In this way, the vapours extract flavour compounds as they evaporate.

The spirit obtained from pot-distillers is amber coloured and carries more flavour whereas that from column-distillers is clear and less flavoured but with a stronger alcohol. London Dry Gin is an example of column-distilled alcohol.

Oxley have developed a cold distillation method for their London Dry Gin →

The Origin of Rum

Every rum distiller wants to lay claim to their part in the history of rum, in the tale surrounded by pirates, greed and misfortune. The story of rum begins on the plantations that grew sugar for colonial rulers.

Pusser’s rum claim a long tradition in making rum for the English navy. They state the navy were issued a daily ration of rum by the ship’s purser, (where Pusser’s name originated). Pusser’s rum was provided since 1655.

This is the rum that allegedly was used to pickle Admiral Horatio Nelson on the journey from Trafalgar to Gibraltar, in the same manner that Napoleon is said to have been pickled in brandy. Sailors found a way to drain some of the rum and so it gained the nickname of Nelson’s Blood.

The English navy first introduced rum to the service in the West Indies but considering the quantities issued sailors were often a crew of drunkards. In 1740 Admiral Edward Vernon, known as Old Grogram, diluted the rum with water which became known as ‘grog’.

For taxation purposes rum is defined as a spirit distilled from the fermented juice of sugar cane, sugar cane syrup, sugar cane molasses or other sugar cane by-products at less than 95% alcohol by volume, having the taste, aroma and characteristics generally attributed to rum and bottled at not less than 40% alcohol by volume.

Rhum Agricole is freshly squeezed cane juice fermented without adding water. The fermentation process must begin within 24 hours of pressing to avoid natural fermentation by wild yeasts. It is mostly produced in the Caribbean, an example is Barbancourt, a rhum distilled and bottled in Haiti by Société du Rhum Barbancourt.

Rum Industrial sometimes called ‘traditional rum’, uses as a base any of the by products from sugarcane processing. Historically this is primarily from molasses, but can be from turbinado (raw cane sugar), panella (a solid form of sucrose), or brown and white refined sugar.

Bacardi is the largest rum producer in the world and they use different types of molasses sourced from around the world.

A Potted History of Gin

Juniper

But the transition to leisure drinking would take several hundred years until the sixteenth century when distillation became possible from grain and in due course came national spirits such as whisky from Scotland and vodka from Russia.

But Dutch distilleries were able to stabilise the grain distillation process meaning that distillates were available for export and better quality distilled genever started to arrive in England probably from the 1620s. In Belgium as well as the Netherlands and France, they flavoured their grain spirit with juniper. The first recipe for ‘aqua juniper’ appears in 1622.

In a new seafaring world where trading on the seas was rife, England was trading sugar and rum in the West and the Dutch were involved in the Asian spice market of the East.

Schooner

England and the Dutch were the superpowers of trade. The Dutch rivalled England’s East India Dock Company by employing their very own Dutch East India Company. While England was maintaining the largest empire in world history, the Dutch made a truce with Spain in 1609 and were able to open up a trade route into the Mediterranean.

To maintain its empire England needed sugar from the plantations of the Caribbean and the rum trade that grew out of that. In the meantime the investment attracted by Dutch traders allowed them to expand into further territories and establish trading posts.

Dutch Imports into Europe consisted largely of spices and tea, in direct competition with the English and as is the way, the situation led into four consecutive trade wars. It was during these times that shipments of Dutch genever arrived on English shores.

In 1585 English soldiers had experienced a foul tasting genever when fighting alongside the Dutch during the 80 years war. However, Dutch pharmacists now called upon their successful spice trade for ingredients to mix with juniper so that genever became better quality using imported botanicals.

Flavoured spirits get their flavour during the distillation process by introducing the ingredients in with the mash. This gives a subtler flavour than adding ingredients post-distillation as is done with liqueurs.

While England was happily drinking ale and beer, the navy was busy looking to secure export markets for rum, and the Dutch were taking advantage by trading with English smugglers.

The official view is that Dutch genever arrived in England during the 1690s but this is rather to mask the failure to deal with smuggling because unofficially gin had been smuggled in for 70 years. The official year coincides nicely when William of Orange took the throne in 1688. He relaxed laws by allowing distillation by anyone in England so long as domestic grain was used as the base.

This was done because after William of Orange arrived it was clear that consumption of gin was leading to public depravity and the authorities attributed this to a rising crime rate. This attempt to match genever imports with home-made hooch only provided legal alcohol in abundance and England headed into a gin consumption frenzy commonly referred to as the Gin Craze.

Without regulation the home-brew gin was nothing like the finer Dutch imported drink. It was so rough that it had to be sweetened with sugar, because anyone could make it in any way and it became based on a malt wine and tasted more like sherry or whisky than how we would think of gin today.

With many water-borne diseases prevalent in and around London, gin was a safe drink for the poor. 7,000 gin houses sprung up in London. Roughly 100 years since genever had been smuggled in by the Dutch, by the 1720s close to 5 million gallons of gin were being consumed annually in England with 25% of all homes in London involved in its sale or production.

It was impossible for the government to control and therefore to tax gin and the social problems of alcohol addiction left many destitute and penniless, and gin became known as ‘Mother’s Ruin and Blue Ruin’.

The government responded with a series of Gin Acts designed to raise the cost of gin for drinkers, retailers and producers. The Gin Act of 1736 aimed to control production by making it expensive but was repealed in 1742 and a new policy emerged that licensees would provide reasonable excise duties and charge higher but reasonable prices. This led to the 1743 riots in London.

The Gin Act of 1751 forced gin distillers to sell only to licensed vendors and only to approved establishments and then taxed the distributors heavily. The government encouraged men to drink ale or beer and preferred that everyone rather partook of tea than alcohol and help somewhat to lessen the social drunkenness problem. As a result, the Gin Craze began to diminish after the Gin Act of 1751.

The 1800s brought about a gin revival, gin was made in a style called Old Tom, laced with liquorice and later sugar and it was produced in pot stills. The invention of the continuous still in (sic. 1826, 1827) made a purer alcohol and the base taste did not need to be disguised by sweetening. This new beverage became known as London Dry Gin.

Dry gins are flavoured during distillation and have very little or no sugar added. A variation on London Dry is Plymouth gin, which is subtler and a touch less dry. The combination of botanicals used by gin producers dictates the eventual flavour and aroma of the spirit. Hendricks includes rose petals and cucumber while Bombay Sapphire has lemon peel and liquorice.

The gin types we discussed were:

1. Dutch genever (malty)
2. Old Tom gin (not as malty as genever but sweeter than London Dry)
3. London Dry Gin (very dry distilled from grain)
4. Plymouth/Hendrick’s gins (dry & juniper rich)

Tonic Water

Tonic water is carbonated water in which quinine is dissolved. The difference between Indian tonic water and tonic water is that Indian tonic water has a significantly higher quinine content due to its historic medicinal use. Both are used as alcoholic mixers because of the distinctive bitter flavour

However nowhere near as much quinine is added in tonic water as for medicinal treatment. A glass of tonic water holds roughly 20 mg of quinine. For the treatment of ailments other than malaria a dose would be in the region of 200 to 300 mg. But you would need to consume 20 liters of tonic water daily to achieve the dosage necessary to treat malaria.

The English theologian and clergyman Joseph Priestley (1733 – 1804) published many works and is generally credited with the discovery of oxygen. In 1772 he published a paper with a most wonderfully title:

Impregnating Water with Fixed Air

He described dripping sulfuric acid onto chalk to produce carbon dioxide gas, and encouraging the gas to dissolve into an agitated bowl of water. He found that water treated this way had a pleasant taste and that became his invention of carbonated water.

Carbonated water goes by many names; soda water, club soda, Seltzer. Seltzer is pure carbonated water originating from one location in Germany that first produced it whereas other soda types have added minerals like potassium bicarbonate and potassium citrate to enhance the flavour or added sodium.

Tonic water is carbonated water containing quinine and a sweetener like high fructose corn syrup or an artificial sweetener to make a diet tonic water. So as a beverage ingredient soda adds a pleasant tasting water base (mixer) and tonic adds sweet and bitter qualities. So whereas soda and seltzer are interchangeable, soda and tonic are not.

It was discovered in 1824 by the English navy that Angostura bitters were effective against seasickness and they were therefore used for medicinal purposes. As had been the case with quinine in wine, the navy found that bitters were a great accompaniment to gin, producing a pink gin.

During the 1840s the English were using 700 tons of cinchona bark annually and Pink Gin became a cocktail fashionable in London made with Plymouth gin and enough Angostura bitters to turn the drink pink.

In 1858 Erasmus Bond introduced the first commercial tonic water and soon after in 1870 Schweppes introduced Indian Quinine Tonic. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Schweppes is supposed to be thought of as the best Indian tonic water out there but it can be quite brutish to gin and masks almost all of the flavour of London dry gins. On the other hand Canada Dry is very sweet and equally brutish for the same reason as above.

Looking on the bright side, soda water and tonic water contains no fat, calories or cholesterol.