Gin’s revival is quite the tonic

CONGRATULATIONS to Esker Gin, the north-east distillery which scooped two top awards against fierce competition. Even The Archers have joined the current gin revival, launching Scruff Gin at The Bull last month, but Scottish distilleries lead the way to ice cold G&Ts, with 70 per cent of non-fictional gin now produced here. PG Wodehouse defined the hangover after a night of overenthusiastic gin slinging as ‘the roaring of butterflies in the meadow’, but the social history of gin is fascinating, especially its upward progress from mother’s ruin and Hogarth’s Gin Lane to being a drink associated with toffs. Pink gin started out as a sluice of comfort for sailors, who found that the Angostura bitters used to treat seasickness were less bitter if you added a slug of neat gin, but later became the epitome of the good life, served on yachts, or in Noël Coward’s penthouse.

When sophisticates turned to wines in the 1980s, gin was dismissed as a middleaged, middle-class drink, the alcoholic equivalent of afternoon tea. Now it’s back, thanks to a global cocktail scene.

Earlier this month I recorded a TV interview with an intense documentary filmmaker who had just read Small is Beautiful by the economist EF Schumacher. ‘I cannot think of any situation where small is not beautiful,’ declared the director, passionately.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said our cameraman. ‘What about a gin and tonic?’