Talkin ’bout my g-g-gin-eration
I have always been wary of gin. My father always had some on hand, a green bottle of Tanqueray and probably some Beefeater, though I’m not sure what for. If my parents ever drank gin and tonics or rickeys or gimlets, I was unaware of it. Mostly it was beer and Jim Beam or Jack Daniels. Sometimes they’d crack the seal on a bottle of Crown Royal or Chivas Regal. But I never saw them drink the gin.
So when I came of age, it was with beer and tequila and cheap Scotch. We’d hit the liquor store and buy whatever caught our eye. I went through a period where I thought I was Pete Townshend and drank Remy Martin (the Empty Glass era: “I’m like a connoisseur of champagne cognac/the perfume nearly beats the taste”). I studied Italian wines and took up
single-malt Scotch the way some people take up golf.
Now, though this column keeps me experimenting with new things, I consider myself mostly a wine and bourbon guy. I know something about rum, a little about beer and enough about vodka. I still keep my hand in on Scotch. I can fake it with port. But my gin is weak. I often forget to stock tonic for my friends who drink it. I never think of making Churchillian martinis. Winston Churchill was famous for his gin martinis, which contained the merest trace of French vermouth. (During World War II, when vermouth supplies ran low in Britain, it’s said he would respectfully bow in the direction of France when mixing the drink.)
For martinis, I default to vodka cold as Stalin’s heart. (Though it turns out Uncle Joe was probably more fond of decadent Western whiskey. He had quite a stash of single malts — some provided by his ally Churchill — and Hennessy cognac from 1929 in his dacha outside Moscow. But he also drank humble Georgian wines from earthen urns.)
... Maybe part of the reason I’ve never really gotten into gin is an early fascination with the famous William Hogarth engraving Gin Lane, which was published in 1750 as part of a campaign in support of what would become the Gin Act. That law prohibited gin distillers from selling to unlicensed merchants and increased fees charged to merchants, thereby practically eliminating the small gin shops that proliferated through London in the first half of the 18th century.
When Hogarth produced the print, more than a quarter of the residences in the parish of St. Giles, the London slum depicted in the print, were operating as gin shops. The artist depicts a woman lolling on steps as her child slips from her arms over the railing and presumably to his death, while a pawnbroker (“S. Gripe”) relieves a carpenter of his saw and a housewife of her pots and pans in exchange for a few pennies. In the background, we see the portentously named “Kilman” distillery and a presumably honest barber who’s hanged himself in despair. In the left foreground, the “Gin Royal,” with a sign that promises “Drunk for a Penny/dead drunk for two pence/clean Straw for Nothing.” Meanwhile, the undertaker seems to be doing quite well.
Contrast this with Hogarth’s Beer Street, which was produced at the same time and meant to be viewed sideby-side with Gin Lane. In Beer Street, everyone is happy and in robust health. The only person in the picture who seem to be faring poorly is the pawnbroker Mr. Pinch. Beneath the sign of the Barley Mow, workmen relax as one flirts with (well, accosts) a serving maid. All is well in Beer Street — here a barrel of beer hangs from a rope rather than the suicide depicted in Gin Lane.
As sensationalistic as Hogarth’s Gin Lane seems, it really wasn’t that hyperbolic. Gin really was a kind of crack cocaine of the 18th century. It was cheaper than water.
It had been introduced into the country about a century before, after it was invented by a professor of medicine at the University of Leiden in Holland, Franciscus de la Boe, who was searching for botanical remedies for tropical diseases. Boe discovered that, suspended in alcohol, juniper extract had some promising properties: it lowered blood pressure, eased insomnia, stimulated the appetite and acted as a diuretic. He envisioned it a “blood cleanser.”
But best of all, the redistilling of pure malt spirits with juniper berries could produce a smooth beverage to rival French brandy.
It became popular first with the British upper classes, especially after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that deposed the Catholic James II and brought Dutch stad-holder William of Orange and his wife, Mary II, to the British throne. Suddenly it was more fashionable to drink the imported Dutch product and French brandy was considered “so 1687.”
Soon the British began making gin, though a grain shortage meant they had to make do with inferior ingredients, including, literally, hogwash. British gin was much cheaper than the Dutch variety, but it tasted so horrible that some distillers flavored their product with turpentine.
By the 1720s, the English had refined the process so they were producing cheap and relatively palatable gin, though this early English gin still probably tasted more like moonshine than Bombay Sapphire.
When surplus grain began piling up in the 1730s, the price of the booze went down. Londoners, accustomed to beer with its lower alcohol content and more filling bulk, attacked the more potent beverage with gusto and suffered predictably. Some of them dropped dead.
So I leave gin mostly alone.
Except sometimes.
... Recently, we went to a delightful “Ham and Gin” party where I tested Tanqueray’s citrus-infused Rangpur variety (82.6 proof) and found I liked it quite a lot. Now, I understand that those who insist on Plymouth gin probably regard Rangpur as an abomination, a libation closer to diet 7UP than real gin, but I liked it. It made for a very refreshing gin and tonic. It would probably make an interesting martini. For me it might prove to be a gateway gin.
At this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, I went to a party cosponsored by Bombay Sapphire (yes, readers, even when I’m on assignment, I’m working for you) and tried their new Bombay Sapphire East Gin (84 proof, $35; I haven’t seen it in stores yet, but it’s coming). It is supposed to be an “Asian” extension of the brand, and it features all the botanical notes from the original from Bombay Sapphire (juniper, lemon peel, cubeb berries, grains of paradise, coriander seeds, angelica root, almond, orris root and licorice) and then adds lemon grass and black pepper.
It’s noticeably spicier than the original Sapphire (which, to me, is a little too neutral). It made a thrilling martini. (Which really was a Churchillian martini — there was no vermouth on the premises.) m Gin and Juice (via Snoop Dogg and the Gourds)
Seagram’s gin. Juice. Mix in cup. Just make sure you chip in.