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Gin Blossoms

The life and death of gin—and its 21st-century resurgence

spirits gin

B on vivant Charles H. Baker, who ate and drank his way around the world in the first quarter of the 20th century, chronicled his adventure in the two-volume Gentleman's Companion. In it, he succinctly described the importance of gin: "No bar can be without dry gin and be called a bar."

Many modern bars, however, seem determined to prove him wrong. Since the 1950s, when savvy marketers began pushing cheap-and-easy vodka in the United States, traditional gin drinks, such as the Martini and the Gimlet, have given way to ersatz vodka-laced versions.

Fortunately, a cadre of ambitious bartenders has recently revived the classic drinks of the early 20th century. Those at the vanguard of this movement have picked jilted gin as a spirit that deserves to be celebrated once again. Indeed, it has a clear advantage over vodka, which is usually distilled to be virtually tasteless. Instead of kowtowing to mixers, gin's botanical flavors stand up, adding character to cocktails.

How Gin Is Made

Gin begins very much like vodka ends—as a neutral grain spirit—but then is flavored with a world of seeds, spices, herbs, fruits, and roots that are known collectively as botanicals. Some gins are made in the belly of the still; the botanicals are left to soak in the base spirit. As soon as they've imparted their flavors, the spirit is distilled and then cut with water to a drinkable strength. Others are made by boiling the base spirits and passing the resulting vapor through a chamber that holds the mix of botanicals. When the steam is cooled back into liquid, it's gin.

Typically, common flavorings such as angelica, coriander, and lemon peel take a backseat to the piney aroma and flavor of juniper berries, gin's defining characteristic and the very root of its name. (The word gin is a distortion of genever, the Dutch word for juniper.) Gin's restored popularity, however, has spawned a flood of new brands, including some—cucumber-and-rose-petal-spiked Hendrick's Gin, for example—that challenge the dominance of juniper.

In the Beginning

One oft-repeated yarn attributes the genesis of juniper-flavored spirits to scientist Franciscus Sylvius, who worked at the University of Leyden in the Netherlands in the mid 17th century and created a spirit to harness the supposed medicinal properties of juniper.

It's as good a creation myth as any: The Dutch were (and remain) inventive distillers; Dr. Sylvius was an accomplished physician and scientist; and the juniper-flavored spirit genever, which contains malt wine as well as neutral grain spirit, is still popular in Holland today. Yet regardless of who first put juniper and booze together in a bottle, it was Dutch genever that spawned modern dry gin.

Genever got a bump in popularity across the North Sea in 1689 when William III, the Dutch-born King of England, banned imports of French spirits to his country during the Nine Years War. With brandy verboten, genever caught on—big time. Soon distillers in England were producing a rough version of the Dutch spirit that was perhaps the first gin. Because much of it was made in back-alley stills, by the middle of the century it had gone from a way to liberate British drinking from trade with the French to a major social ill in London. Take, for example, the British painter William Hogarth's 1751 engraving Gin Lane, which depicts a drunken mother dropping her baby amid other ostensibly gin-fueled acts of depravity. But by then gin was an integral part of the British drinking life.

Gin Grows Up

Modern gin was born in the 18th century with the invention of the column (or patent) still. This device gave gin makers more control over the distilling process than did primitive or amateur pot stills—no more sweeteners needed to mask off flavors.

Over the next century, gin made its way across the ocean and around the world. British sailors drank Plymouth gin undiluted, unchilled, and laced with bitters, and called the concoction Pink Gin. The army of the British East India Company mixed London Dry gin with tonic water to create the world's best-tasting antimalaria beverage, the gin and tonic—the quinine in tonic treats the disease; the gin's added for flavor. (Back then, gin was made in the port cities of Plymouth, Bristol, Liverpool, and London, and named according to its city of origin. Today these gins are referred to simply as London Dry gin, now the world's dominant style.) In the United States, where cocktail culture was being invented in the early to mid 19th century, Dutch gins, darker and sweeter than their British counterparts, were being mixed with sugar syrup and lemon juice and served as the Improved Holland Gin cocktail.

Before Prohibition, Americans drank three styles of gin: London Dry, Dutch-style, and something called Old Tom gin (a sweetened version that's no longer commercially available)—the country's dry period spawned another style known as bathtub gin, a crude spirit made illicitly by amateur distillers. By the 1950s and '60s, drier, cleaner-tasting London Dry–style gin—particularly Gordon's—had pushed the sweeter, darker styles out of the limelight and off store shelves. Small producers held on for a while, but as the liquor industry consolidated and drinkers turned their attention to vodka drinks in the middle of the 20th century, old styles fell by the wayside.

What to Drink When

Gin's renewed popularity in the first few years of the new millennium has produced an ever-expanding array of options for drinkers. Some new gins, such as No. 209, made by Napa's Edge Hill Winery, excel at the classic style, while others, such as Hendrick's, stake out new territory. Because each gin has a different flavor profile and alcohol content (the range is approximately 37 to 47 percent, though Plymouth makes a "navy strength" gin that weighs in at 57 percent), a gin lover would be wise to stock several bottles for different occasions. Something classic such as Tanqueray for gin and tonics. Perhaps a higher-alcohol juniper powerhouse like Junipero from San Francisco for bracing afterwork Gibsons. Or even Old Raj, which is made in Scotland, for sipping, because gin has joined whiskey as a spirit that deserves to be savored all by itself.

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food innovation group: bon appétit and epicurious