Gin

Gin has had a bit of a varied history, to say the least. Gin is pretty quintessentially English, as compared to whisky which is currently a bit of a cross between Scotland's entire export economy and a Chinese businessman's penis extension. A pretty wonderful cross, but a cross nonetheless. There's just so much more associated with gin. Gin is burnt into the national character. It is the symbol of our nation's history and a chart of just how much we've developed as a society since it first came to the fore. It's also quite good mixed with other things in a glass. I realise that this is a blog about whisky but I for one haven't drunk much of it recently because it's been what we in England call summer and summer is a time for gin. And Pimm's, but that's another matter entirely. And I believe that gin is a little under respected, a little under appreciated, insomuch as an alcoholic liquid can be, anyway. There's art to do with gin, albeit portraying the stuff in a fairly unflattering light.

Gin started out as a cheap way for poor people to get as drunk as they possibly could as quickly as they possibly could so they could escape their dangerous, miserable, drudge-ridden and generally impoverished existence in the docks of London. It probably didn't help that the water then would kill you, the government had significant duties on foreign spirits (hence why smugglers and, by extension, Hastings exist) and, oh yes, there was no licensing of this powerful spirit. People were literally making it in their bathtubs. Well, figuratively, since they didn't have baths. Anyway. As you might expect gin got rather a bad name at this point seeing as how it maybe, possibly, probably singlehandedly stabilised London's burgeoning population explosion through a charming combination of death, child mortality and alcohol-fueled crime. Probably tasted pretty horrible too.

 Anyway, people got a little wise to just how much of a problem gin was becoming and clamped down on production and distribution, times changed and eventually almost all the gin production in London stopped. Out in the colonies, at that slightly fluid moment where the Empire was rushing out just fast enough for new and exciting diseases to kill the colonists, there was a slight problem with malaria. At that time there was only one solution to catching malaria, and that was to consume a large amount of quinine which, by all accounts, tasted pretty awful. The solution? Soak it in water then pour gin on top until it tastes palatable. And so the gin and tonic was invented on some sun-baked verandah in Ceylon or some other far flung outpost of her Majesty's empire and came to characterise a completely different aspect of England. Not just for the poor, gin was the respectable drink of the colonial adventurer. I expect that, if he were real, Allan Quartermain would have been perpetually squiffy on G&Ts, much like this:

Then the middle-classes got a grip on the stuff. This was the time of gin in teacups and hammered housewives smashing the stuff back to cope with 60's suburbia. And still is, if my mother's liquor cupboard is any indication. But gin, like all good alcoholic drinks, is undergoing a bit of a renaissance. In 2009 the first gin distillery to open in London for 189 years started production of the absolutely brilliant Sipsmith gin, in their still called Prudence. This is gin as it should be made, not by the thousands or millions of gallons by Diageo, but in 300 bottle batches in a residential street with water from the Cotswolds and barley from, well, a nearby field. After a bit of a slow start Sipsmith gin is now available all over the place – so long as that place has a Waitrose – and is well worth trying.

Although gin is best known as being from London (or Plymouth, for some reason) sometimes it's best to look further afield. So far afield, in fact, that you're rapidly running out of Britain before you get there. Shetland, that windswept, barren, and sheep filled island is about as far from the traditional homes of gin drinking as you could realistically get before you cross the Arctic Circle. Yet Shetland is the home of Blackwood's gin which is made using locally collected Wild Water Mint, Meadowsweet and Sea Pink flowers. I don't know what any of these are, but the end concoction is absolutely delicious by itself or mixed at half and half with tonic and a slice of lemon. 

And that's all there is to it; now I hope you'll all mix a drink, sit back, and savour the taste of history and the last, somewhat overcast, days of summer.

James