Gin Craze; The Return of The

I have lost count of the number of Gin Palaces in my home area.

It is a funny term for, well, a bar or a bit of a posh pub over and above the former not so posh public houses which have had to reinvent themselves into foodie or fun establishments after the realisation that smokers as former patrons just used to hog the bar, nurse a solitary pint and eke out the kick from their fag for as long as possible. 

These are hard economic times for business and none more so than for those in the traditional licenced trade. 

We are told that home drinking, cheap supermarket booze and smuggled stock is continuing to threaten or actually close down what were once valued venues for community, company and relationships. 

So the return of Gin drinking is the next latest thing to hopefully keep hostelries going a bit longer. 

Consumption is not, I stress in the same manner as it once was in the late 17^th and 18^th Centuries when it was seen as a pastime, a plentiful and inexpensive tipple for the working classes and even see as a patriotic drive in reducing brandy drinking which was, after all, a source of income for that very regular adversary, the French. 

In the national liquor cupboard, this nation of ours being well known globally for its fondness for drunkenness, Gin is actually a relatively new arrival. 

It was an import from Holland in the late 17^th Century and made popular by the similarly imported King William, he of Orange (the place, not Trumpesque skin tone). 

The Dutch product was a distilled blend of wine and Juniper Berries, the latter coming from their Far East Trading Empire. Gin became a shortened Anglicised name from the Dutch word for Juniper which was Jeneva or Geneva. 

By the 1730’s there was a Gin Craze. 

It was estimated that Londoners drank, on average, 2 pints of gin per week, this being the product of some 1500 mainly back street or sole proprietor distillers who had taken up the Government initiative to allow such trading in return for licencing fees and taxation payments. 

Gin drinking was becoming a matter of concern for lawmakers and those with a social or philanthropic conscience who observed its worst excesses on the city streets across the nation. 

There is a very graphic illustration by the artist Hogarth of the sheer chaos of a gin swilling populus under the description of "Mothers ruin".

Some claimed medicinal and aphrodisiac benefits to the tipple but evidence suggested it contributed to ill health and sloth as well as being seen as the primary cause of crime in London. Stronger than brandy it could also cause the blood and temper to boil easily with resultant violence and other misdemeanours. 

The UK Government was however enjoying considerable tax revenues from the distillers and had progressively increased the rate in the middle part of the 18^th Century which by 1743 actually led to riots and disorder. 

This culminated in the 1751 Gin Act, to give its colloquial name, which eliminated the small gin shops and restricted trade to larger distillers and retailers. It was probably too late by then anyway as gin drinking was a serious rival to beer consumption. 

The drink did go out of fashion and decline in volumes consumed until the 1840’s when there was a popular upsurge attaining the same levels as the halcyon mid 1700’s. 

To some extent this was explained away as a symbol of new found affluence in the emerging Victorian middle classes who had excess funds to expend on spirits. The Gin Palace emerged with particular emphasis on the attraction and palatability of the drink to the fairer sex. 

Fast forward to 2017 and the resurgence of gin drinking by some 12 percent from previous years. 

We are by all accounts a nation of cocktail drinkers. Government coffers have been swelled by around £3.4 billion in revenues from spirits of which at 76% in tax take per bottle price gin is an important contributor. 

There are now some 80 brands with fancy blends of herbs and spices to make the good old G&T seem positively boring.

In this weekend’s Times colour supplement whole pages of advertising were dedicated to Gin brands and from the buzz and activity around the plate glass doors of my local Gin purveyors we seem to be open quite easily to suggestion and persuasion of this nature.

There may be parallels to the historic Gin Crazes in today's slick and upmarket operations whether it is a feeling of more disposable income in our pockets, a desire for a bit of bling and glam on an evening out, peer pressure from film and tv depictions of sophistication or, full circle, an expression of British Patriotism in uncertain times.