Gin is a spirit flavoured predominantly with juniper — that is the legal definition, and everything else is variation. It is thoroughly British by adoption, though it arrived from the Netherlands, and its history in Britain runs from genuine social catastrophe to a very fashionable present.
The Gin Craze
Gin arrived with Dutch soldiers and with William of Orange in 1688, and its rise was accelerated by policy. Restrictions on distilling were lifted while French brandy was heavily taxed, and by the 1730s anyone in London could distil and sell gin without a licence.
The result was a public health disaster on a scale difficult to overstate. Cheap, frequently poisonous gin was sold from thousands of premises, consumption reached extraordinary levels in the poorest parishes, and mortality in London exceeded births for years. Hogarth’s 1751 print Gin Lane — with its collapsing mother dropping her baby — was propaganda for reform, and was not much of an exaggeration.
A series of Gin Acts, culminating in 1751, brought it under control by licensing and taxation.
Respectability
By the Victorian era gin had been rehabilitated. Distilling improved, the column still allowed a cleaner spirit, and the gin palace — gaslit, mirrored, elaborately decorated — became a fixture of the Victorian city, offering somewhere warm and bright to working people whose homes were neither.
London Dry
The dominant style, and a method rather than a place: all flavour must come from natural botanicals added during distillation, with nothing added afterwards but water and a very small amount of sugar. London Dry gin can be made anywhere in the world.
Plymouth gin is a protected designation and must be made in Plymouth. Old Tom is a sweeter historic style, revived for cocktails. Sloe gin is gin steeped with sloes and sugar, made domestically every autumn from hedgerow fruit.
Gin and tonic
The classic serve began as medicine. British officers in India took quinine against malaria, dissolved in water as tonic. It was intensely bitter, so they added gin, sugar and lime. Winston Churchill’s remark that gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives than all the doctors in the empire is quoted constantly and not entirely wrong.
The British serve is straightforward: a generous measure over plenty of ice in a tall glass, tonic poured down the side, and a slice of lemon or lime. The elaborate Spanish-style balloon glass with juniper berries and rosemary arrived in the 2010s and divides opinion.
The craft boom
A change in licensing rules in 2009 allowed small-scale distilling, and the number of UK distilleries rose from around twenty to well over eight hundred. Every county now has several gins, distilleries run tours and tasting rooms, and supermarket shelves carry dozens of small brands with botanicals ranging from seaweed to Earl Grey.
Whether the boom has peaked is a regular subject of trade-press speculation. What is not in doubt is that gin went, in fifteen years, from a slightly old-fashioned drink associated with elderly relatives to the most fashionable spirit in Britain.