Selects: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Gin

What It Covers

Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant trace gin's complete history from ancient Roman juniper wine recipes through the 18th-century London gin craze, covering distillation methods, legal classifications, botanical sourcing, and the modern artisanal gin revival, with practical guidance on gin varieties and cocktail origins.

Key Questions Answered

• •Gin Classification: Three distinct legal tiers exist: basic gin (flavored neutral spirit, essentially vodka), distilled gin (re-distilled with botanicals), and London Dry (distilled, no added sugar). Most reputable brands fall into the distilled category. Understanding these tiers helps consumers identify quality products and avoid paying premium prices for flavored neutral spirits.
• •Distillation Methods: Two techniques produce distinct flavor profiles. Steeping submerges botanicals directly in the base spirit during heating, producing fuller extraction. Vapor infusion, used by Bombay Sapphire, suspends botanicals in a basket above boiling spirit so steam passes through them. Combining both methods, as Saint George Terroir does, allows precise control over individual botanical intensity.
• •Juniper's Role: Juniper berries provide gin's signature piney, citrusy, peppery flavor and remain the legally expected primary botanical. Modern artisan producers increasingly omit juniper entirely, producing spirits that technically qualify as gin but taste radically different. Consumers seeking traditional gin character should verify juniper appears first on a product's botanical list before purchasing.
• •Gin and Tonic Origins: British soldiers stationed in malaria-prone India consumed 700 tons of cinchona bark annually in the 1840s for its quinine content. Distilled quinine became commercial tonic water. Soldiers combined their gin rations with tonic to mask quinine's bitterness, then added citrus to prevent scurvy, creating the gin and tonic as a functional medical cocktail.
• •Gin Act Legacy: Eight parliamentary acts passed over roughly 22 years in the 1700s progressively raised licensing costs and import fees, eliminating small distilleries and consolidating production among large operators. This 200-year-old legal framework remained active until Sipsmith successfully lobbied for a small-batch distilling license in the 2000s, directly enabling today's artisanal gin movement in England.