Love Food Editors - The Bartenders guide to Gin: classic and modern-day cocktails for gin lovers

From its most humble beginnings as a drink of the poor and destitute to its association as the drink of privilege and royalty, gin has quite a colourful tale to tell. Distillation, of which gin is just one product, is an ancient art the first stills were filled by Arabic alchemists in the Far East as early as the 1st century when the Roman Empire was in full swing and Christianity was in its formative years. These early scientists spent decades distilling all manner of elixirs, gleaning knowledge from other specialists of the time, such as the Greeks. By the 12th century the knowledge had been absorbed into Europe and was being used by Benedictine monks in Salerno, Italy. At this point, spirit was used for medical and scientific reasons, in order to preserve the rare and precious ingredients used in medicine. These early distillations of alcoholic spirit would have tasted truly awful, due to the primitive distillation process.

Thanks to the Benedictine monks, distillation began to spread gradually through other monasteries in Europe. The process was still crude, but over the centuries it was refined by Europes scientific minds. By the 1600s, distillation was widely used and the use of grain- and grape-based spirits was commercialized into liquors such as Chartreuse, Armagnac and gins forerunner, genever. Genever is a grain-based spirit made in pot stills, (much like whiskey) flavoured with Juniper and in some cases aged in oak casks. The name genever is derived from the Dutch word for Juniper and is pronounced yey-nih-ver . It is still made in some of the oldest distilleries in the world, such as Amsterdams Bols Distillery, which dates back to 1575.

Nowadays Genever isnt so well known outside the Low Countries and specialist drinks circles, but without it we would not have gin as we know it. Gin became hugely popular throughout the 1600s. The Thirty Years War, which raged across Europe from 16181648, made other spirits much harder to acquire, while the Dutch East India Trading Company (known as the VOC) was actively developing overseas markets. Genever had also become a staple of the Dutch military and, in turn, of English soldiers who had been sent by Queen Elizabeth I to fight alongside them. The Thirty Years War was one of Europes bloodiest wars, but we do have it to thank for the dramatic influx of genever coming across the English Channel. The taste for gin soon became ingrained in London.

In the early 1700s, British distillers keen to emulate the flavour and success of genever started to produce the first English gin. Because there were no strict laws surrounding licensing and production, London hosted a massive boom of spirits. These early English gins were made using various methods and ingredients some were downright toxic, but they were all made from grain and flavoured with juniper. The period from the early 1700s to the 1750s is the ugliest chapter in gins history and the source of many of the myths that still surround the spirit. After a series of acts introduced by the Government to control the gin craze, London started to sober up and some iconic gin brands started to emerge. With the 1800s came the age of the cocktail, and in the 1830s the birth of the column still, which was to revolutionize the production of gin, and all spirits.

The column enabled a far purer spirit style because of its vastly more efficient distillation mechanics. With a cleaner and purer spirit, producers started to remove the sugar and other additives, which were no longer needed to mask their distillates and dry gin was born. Illustration of a gin shop from Charles Dickens Sketches by Boz (1836). English Gin was now on the up, the hideous gins of the 1700s had gone and fine-quality dry gins began to be appreciated the world over. The drink flourished even during US Prohibition, and having survived two world wars, bounced back and continued to grow into the mid-1950s.

FROM GRAIN to GLASS

In its simplest form, gin is a pure spirit that has been flavoured with juniper and other botanicals.

FROM GRAIN to GLASS

In its simplest form, gin is a pure spirit that has been flavoured with juniper and other botanicals.

A spirit is generally made using either pot or column stills and is the product of distilling an alcoholic solution that is usually made from grapes or grains. The majority of gins start life as a neutral grain spirit (NGS). This spirit is the product of column distillation, a technique that has been practised since the mid-1800s. This has revolutionised the production of spirits and is used on a mammoth scale in huge distilleries, some of which are capable of producing in excess of 100-million litres/26-million gallons of pure alcohol per annum. These distilleries are essential to the whole spirits industry, despite being a far cry from the shiny copper stills used in the final stages of the original process of gin-making. To understand NGS and how it is used to make gin, you first need to have an understanding of exactly how alcohol is made.