The Origins and History of Gin
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The word is an English shortening of Genever, the Dutch word for juniper.
In the late 1580s a juniper-flavored spirit of some sort was found in Holland by British troops who were fighting against the Spanish in the Dutch War of Independence.
The Dutch themselves were encouraged by their government to favor such grain spirits over imported wine and brandy by lack of excise taxes on such local drinks.
A beginning was clear a few decades later in 1600, when Dr..
Franciscus de la Boë in the university town of Leiden created a juniper and spice-flavored medicinal spirit that he promoted as a diuretic.
Genever quickly found favor across the English Channel, first as a medicine (Samuel Pepys wrote in 1660 a case of \"colic \" to treat with a dose of \"strong water made of juniper \") and then as a beverage.
When the Dutch Protestant William of Orange and his English wife Mary became co-rulers of England after the "Glorious Revolution" drove James II from the throne, he moved to discourage the importation of brandy from the Catholic wine-making countries by setting high tariffs.
Promoted to replace the production of grain spirits ( \grain brandy \' as then called), to abolish the taxes and fees for the production of local products such as gin.
History has shown that prohibition never works, but unfettered production of alcohol has its problems too.
Mass drunkenness became a serious problem.
" Panicky attempts by the government to prohibit Gin production, such as the Gin Act of 1736, resulted in massive illicit distilling and the cynical marketing of "medicinal" spirits with such fanciful names as Cuckold's Comfort and My Lady's Eye Water.
Fagin's irritable comment to a child in the film Oliver -"Shut up and drink your Gin!"-had a basis in historical fact.
In British North American colonies such celebrated Americans as Paul Revere and George Washington were notably fond of Gin, and the Quakers were well-known for their habit of drinking Gin toddies after funerals.
L arrival of the Victorian era in England in the mid-19th Century began a low-key restoration of reputation by Gin.
The harsh, sweetened "Old Tom" styles of Gin of the early 1700s slowly gave way to a new cleaner style called Dry Gin.
This type of gin was with the City of London to the extent that the term \"London Dry \" Gin is a collective term for the way no matter where you were actually made,.
Genteel middle-class ladies sipped their sloe Gin (Gin flavored with sloe berries) while consulting Mrs.
Beeton Book of Home Management (a cross between the popular Victorian pleasure of cooking and lifestyle books, Martha Stewart) recipe for gin-based mixed drink.
The British military, particularly the officer corps, became a hotbed of Gin consumption.
The best known of these cocktails, the Gin and Tonic, was created as a way for Englishmen in tropical colonies to take their daily dose of quinine, a very bitter medicine used to ward off malaria.
In Holland the production of Genever was quickly integrated into the vast Dutch trading system.
Many of today's leading Dutch Genever distillers can trace their origins back to the 16th and 17th centuries.
Belgium developed its own juniper-flavored spirit, called Jenever (with a "j"), in a manner similar to that in Holland (which controlled Belgium for a time in the early 19th century).
The two German invasion of Belgium in World Wars I and II had it particularly difficult for the manufacturers pulled out of juniper, while the Germans occupied the distilleries their copper stills and tubing for use in the manufacture of cartridge cases.
The remaining handful of present-day Belgian Jenever distillers produce Jenever primarily for the local domestic market.
Gin may have originated in Holland and developed into a style more popular in England, but his most avid consumers of today are in Spain, which has the highest consumption per capita in the world.
Production of London Dry-style Gin began in the 1930s, but serious consumption did not begin until the mix of Gin and Cola became inexplicably popular in the 1960s.
Production of gin in the United States dates from the colonial period, but the big boost to the production of gin was the advent of Prohibition in 1920.
Moonshining quickly moved in to fill the gap left by the shutdown of commercial distilleries, but the furtive nature of illicit distilling worked against the production of the then-dominant whiskies, all of which required some aging in oak casks.
Gin, on the other hand, did not require any aging, and was relatively easy to make by mixing raw alcohol with juniper berry extract and other flavorings and spices in a large container such as a bathtub (thus the origin of the term "Bathtub Gin").
Repeal of Prohibition at the end of 1933 ended the production of bootleg Gin, but Gin remained a part of the American beverage scene.
It still remains popular, helped along recently by the revived popularity of the Martini.
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