WORLD GIN DAY
MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Artisanal trend gins up drink with a history
World Gin Day on June 10 is an excuse to indulge in a beverage whose history is more fraught than most other alcoholic drinks
June 10 is World Gin Day – an excuse (as if one were needed) to indulge in a beverage whose history is more fraught than most other alcoholic drinks. The most cost-effective route to inebriation in 18th-century England, gin’s image initially took a hammering: think of "gin-joints" and "gin-soaked". Developed — as far as we know — in Holland, it took off in England following the accession of William of Orange. Within a few years, it spawned an epidemic of drunkenness known as the Gin Craze. Liquor licensing, "sin" taxation and prohibitionism can all be traced to this unhappy era of British history, as indeed can the rise of temperance religions like Methodism. Hogarth’s 18th-century engravings do not present a pretty picture of the role played by gin (mother’s ruin) in the destruction of family life. Gin has long put this era behind it, passing through a happier colonial period where, mixed with quinine tonic, it helped the British in the Raj (and elsewhere in tropical parts of the e...
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