Gin


Martin Miller, centre, demonstrating what gin can do for you


Paul Antrobus discovers why Angela and Prudence are at the forefront of the latest trend for boutique gins


LEADING THE ‘GINTELLIGENSIA’


M


other’s ruin no more – it’s become a drink for the cognoscenti and these days


you’ll fi nd an amazing 50 or so different boutique gins on specialist retailers’ websites. Not necessarily on supermarket shelves yet, they demonstrate how independent gin makers are, providing consumer choice with ‘better gins’ for the fashionable UK drinking set. And, in competition with the upstarts, mainstream brands such as Tanqueray and Beefeater now also offer premium specials with distinctive fl avour characteristics. This most English of tipples wasn’t an English product from the outset, however, and we have to thank the British mercenaries who fought in the Netherlands in the 1600s for what we now call ‘London gin’. They found that the rough local spirit called ‘Genever’ (Dutch for ‘juniper’) gave them useful Dutch courage against the French and, just like any other travellers today, brought some back with them on their return home. Londoners took to gin like bears to honey and refi ned and anglicised the liquid into ‘London dry gin’. Since the 1700s, what we know as ‘London’ gin brands have been created, like Gordon’s, set up in Clerkenwell, North London, in 1769, grown and gone global. Then, just as with beer, the brands


80 cywinter 2011


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