July 3, 2020 • 41 mins
This simple, refreshing staple cocktail wouldn't exist if it weren't for heart disease and malaria. In this classic episode, Anney and Lauren trace the history of gin and tonic water -- and explain the science of why they're so tasty together.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Favor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we've
got a classic episode for you about the Gin and Tonic,
which is one of my very favors both drinks and
episode because it has one of my favorite cocktail facts
about cocktails that I probably of the facts the many
(00:29):
facts we've learned throughout this journey, it's one of the
ones I used the most that probably annoys my friends
because they've heard it before, and every time I'm like,
did you know Malary and the gin and tonic? Insert
story there? Yeah, it's well, it's a good story. Yeah.
This this is a very early episode back from and
(00:53):
um yeah yeah. I usually don't drink gin and tonic.
It's kind of like a treat for me. I try
to avoid, um, sweetened SODA's in in my cocktails. Um,
I'm more likely to order a gin and soda, probably
probably with some bitters in it. But oh man, it
is a gin and tonic is delicious. It's so refreshing.
(01:17):
Um And I know we've talked about it before, but
I was jen is one of my favorite alcohols now,
but it took me so long to come to it.
So Gin and Tonic. I know it has or at
least my friends tell me as a reputation as an
old man's drink, but I never had that association with it,
and I didn't come along to it until verily recently.
(01:40):
And I just adore it. Um. And and I know
we've also said before, but we from this episode we
got to do two videos, not one, but two. We
got to make gin with Old Fourth Distillery, our friends
over at Old Fourth Distillery, and we got to have
a nine am Gin Tonics. Yeah, yeah, it was Both
(02:05):
were incredibly delightful. Those videos are still available I believe
on YouTube and um other places as well. Maybe Yeah,
and uh oh it was. It was really spectacular getting
both both processes, um, not just the having cocktails at
nine am part from No, No, it was fine. It
(02:33):
was fine. Um Bitters is um is shipping by the way,
and they do really spectacular um. I'm not sure the
last time I checked their tonic syrup was sold out. Um.
But yeah, oh they do a great, great, great line
of better really beautiful stuff. Yeah, and the tonic syrup
(02:55):
is amazing. Oh it's so good. Um and really really
just increases your um your capacity to put that that
crnine flavor into various other things. But yeah, the gin
and tonic in general UM has been seeing a bit
of popularity right now, especially in canned form, Like even
(03:16):
outside of the United Kingdom, what I know, canned cocktails
in general are rising in popularity, especially in the US
and Japan. I'm sure you've seen all of those Seltzer's UM,
which I am still a little bit perturbed by, UM,
but that's that's okay. Uh. Apparently after an episode of
(03:39):
Fleabag aired that featured leading characters drinking canned gin and tonics,
specifically from Marks and Spencer. Uh, Marks and Spencer Gin
and Tonics sales spiked. That's excellent. I love that. I
must have this experience immediately right. Oh, it's beautiful. UM.
(04:01):
And I'm also seeing a lot of buzz about pink
gin and Tonic out of the UK, UM pink Gin
being um gin with anger Stora bitters at it. That's
interesting because there's also at the many food festivals we
used to attend when that was a thing. One of
(04:21):
always always I think it was beef Eater would be
there and they would have like a pink just everything
pink booth and I guess it was for their pink gin,
but I always assumed it was sort of a gimmick.
I mean, I guess it sort of is, but yeah,
I mean it turns a lovely color of pink, and
pink has been a very popular color these past few years,
(04:43):
so yeah, I don't know. They also hand out I
have several of pink Fannie packs from them because they
give them out at these events. So I am the
most stylish. I'm so ready to spend summer being so
style in my apartment. Everyone's gonna miss out panty back.
(05:06):
I demand Instagram photos. Oh it's gonna be I'm gonna
be so happening to see Annie style corner. Yeah. Um.
Oh and and also, uh, I guess I guess after it.
You know that um that nest Lee brand that makes
(05:27):
the Little the Little after Dinner chocolate mint things. Yeah. Um,
they released a gin and tonic and mint flavor I
think in Germany, but the packaging is in English. I'm
very confused. Um. Interesting, Yeah, I think I saw that too,
and it seemed like it was well reviewed. Um, I'm
(05:50):
struggling to imagine mint going particularly well in that combination
of flavors. But uh, but you know, I'm happy if
people are happy. We always want that. Um. When I
did my cursory gin and tonic search, I think the
two things that stood out to me was one, this
(06:13):
Australia distillery accidentally filled bottles of what was labeled as
gin with hand sanitizer. Oh oh no, but luckily it
was all fine. Uh no one was seriously injured, but one,
I think one Jin Jenker left a review that said
it was horrible. Oh no, oh dear, yes, but it
(06:35):
was all corrected, it was fine, and then not gin
and tonic related at all, but made me giggle. Uh.
A result came up that said Delta is introducing beer
and wine flights, which I'm very curious about but also
interesting timing. But hey, I want your beer flight on
(06:58):
a flight. Okay, yeah, yeah, well I did see that. Yeah,
they're they're opening, Um, they're opening back up because for
for a while they weren't doing any booze service or
drink service I think, other than maybe bottled water on flights,
and so I know that they're opening back up. Not cocktails,
but beer and wine on flights now. Ah, but god, yeah,
(07:22):
I don't know, interesting, interesting, m flying places I miss.
I miss a lot of stuff right now, y'all. Yes, yeah,
but I have the stuff for Gin and Tonic refrigerator
or did that later today? Oh? I do not. Oh,
(07:42):
I've been meaning to get some gin. I've been on
I've been on a pretty serious whiskey kick, um this
past few months. Oh sure, sure, no complaints. Um. One
of the I do keep running out of fizzy water
because I all so, I'm not going to the store
very often, and so I just my roommate and I
(08:04):
just run right through it. So it's yeah, yeah, you
gotta plan these things out. We were talking about this
before the show. My very intense scheduler. Now is not
all my social events, although that's on there too, it's
what am I eating for the next thing? Oh my gosh.
(08:24):
Yeah yeah. Um, but yes, so we have this episode
about Gin and Tonic for you, and we're gonna let
former Annie and Lauren take it away. Hello, and welcome
(08:45):
to food Stuff. I'm Anyries and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And
this is the second edition of our cocktail our. Yes,
still no cocktails though, oh no, we don't know. We
we both have water don't we We do, but we
did to come straight from a distillery in Atlanta that
makes gin. Yeah, and we sampled some of the gin there.
(09:05):
We did way before lunch, that's true, but it was
for work, so for strictly research related purposes. It was
uh and it's old Fourth Distillery in Atlanta, and it
was awesome. Yeah, oh yeah, it was. It was really
really cool getting to watch the process of how gin
gets made. And we'll have a video on that out
(09:28):
around the time that this podcast comes out. Yes, and
this is probably the time when we should mention the
cocktail we are discussing. Yes, what you might know from
the from the title of the episode two. Oh yeah,
I hope so. But yeah, it's always good to get
that out there in the beginning. Oh yes, ye, Gin
and Tonic, Yes, that's what we're talking about today, right
(09:50):
or the G and T that's also called sometimes also
called gin tonic without the end, and right now it's
having a bit of a resurgence, a little bit of
a moment it in the past couple of years, particularly
in Spain, where it's sort of a national drink and
borderline obsession. Really. Yeah, they have like a variation on
(10:10):
it that has more ice and a garnish, and it's
served in a balloon glass that purportedly enhances your ability
to smell the drink. I have had one of these
um and it was lovely, and it came with one
of those big excuse circulars. Yeah. Those always make me
really happy. Yeah. Yeah that then again, as we found out,
(10:32):
as we find out every time we go on a
shoot together, very easily entertained. Yes, both of us are like,
there's bubbles, bubbles. The people working are like, okay, we're enthusiastic. Yes,
it's it's a positive, Yes, I think so. At any rate.
The Gin and Tonic UM, which I very much enjoy,
(10:55):
even just the regular way um, of course, has long
been a go to in Britain, where you can even
buy it in pre mixed cans, which I find slightly horrifying,
to be super honest. Yeah, I saw one of those
and I thought it was like, it kind of looks
similar to a fresca if anyone's familiar with that. So
I went to kind of examine it more closely. Oh,
(11:16):
this is a Jenny tonic, okay. Winston Churchill once said
that quote. The Gin and Tonic has saved more englishmen's
lives and minds than all the doctors in the empire. Wow,
and the New York Times called the year of the
Gin and Tonic. But the gin and tonic has not
(11:37):
always been this trinity summer drink. Yeah. Uh, more on
that in a moment. But first, what's gin and tonic? Annie? Well, Lauren,
I'll tell you it is a highball cocktail, which is
basically just an alcohol based spirit mixed with a larger
percentage of a mixer. And the alcohol base in this
(11:59):
case is you guessed it, gent gin And what could
the mixer be, It's tonic. Um. The order of operations
here typically is the gin, the tonic, lime juice if
you want it, that's optional, and ice. I've seen it
done other ways, but that's mostly what I came across
when I was researching this. And then a lime wedger
(12:21):
or twist to garnish rights. And typically the istio of
gin two tonic is somewhere between one to one or
one to three. And yeah, the lime wedge pretty important.
But that's it. Yeah, I mean, of course there's there's variations. Yeah, obviously, um,
popular ones put in at Angusta Angerstora I think okay,
(12:43):
we think mint and all kinds of tonic water things.
There's whatever tonic you choose to put in there. Yes,
there's so many options there. There's artisanal tonic water. My
boyfriend and pretty much everyone I talked to about it
in London's is by fever Tree, excellent brand. Um. You
can make your own tonic sirup, or you can do
(13:05):
both and mixing together. Yeah, there's a lot of options there. Um.
And since there are only two ingredients and there's usually
more tonic water than gin, you want to make sure
that you like the tonic water you're using if you
want to enjoy your beverage. Yes, And and it helps
if you like the gin that you're using as well. Yeah,
this is a drink that I think you really don't
(13:27):
want to get the cheap stuff. Um. And a personal
note for me, I did not know I liked gin
and tonics until fairly recently because I was just drinking,
just drinking terrible, terrible gin and probably terrible tonic juice.
I was one of those people that was like it
days like a iron tree. Did you just call it
tonic juice? Yeah? That was pretty cool? Patented Yes, yes, Um,
(13:54):
my favorite every day affordable gin of choices eat or
twenty four by the way, and I did a tour
of their Uh I almost said, fury, that's not correct.
Distillery in London when I was there, and it was
really really cool. It's really neat man. Yeah, all the
distilleries now, just from now on, it's all I want
to do. Go visit distilleries, work on that I find.
(14:16):
I wanted to put in that I find New Amsterdam
perfectly acceptable. But of course nice gents are nice. Um
number three London Dry might be my personal favorite. Sometimes
occasionally I like alcohol. Yeah, I mean, work with what
you got. But I do think that this is one
of the drinks that if you can get something a
(14:38):
little better, like the one I said, is only only
twenty bucks, So that's not terrible, not at all. Yeah.
But back to tonic water right. Bars in the US
have been criticized for using a soda gun for the
tonic water part um and that stuff, according to some
chefs or um b soologists, that doesn't have quinine in it.
(15:03):
It may or may not. It may or may not,
which is a bitter ingredient that we're going to talk
about a lot more and it's very important. It's this
whole thing. It's it's what makes tonic water taste like
tonic water, right, um, And that's why I mixologists suggest
to your questra tonic water out of a bottle. If
that sounds to me like I should have just saved
some bucks and ordered something else or made my own
(15:25):
at home. Up to you, to you, and yeah, the
key to this drink is balancing this bitter flavor of
the tonic water with the kind of flowery botanical herbal
herby kind of kind of flavors of the gin. Right,
And the key botanical the key ingredient is juniper in
(15:49):
the gin. Yes, it's the most prominent. Note it has
to be the most prominent. Note. You have to have juniper.
This is very serious, and not just to annie. But
but annie is illegally okay, oh that is serious. Good
in collagen, yes, okay, um. But but of course there's
lots of other ingredients and gin makers use to flavor
(16:09):
their products all kinds of stuff. Yeah, lemon peels, coriander seed,
almonds or liquor shoot, and angelica seed and they're so so,
so so many. The one that I like they use
tea I believe goodness. Yeah, And the Gin and Tonic
has been cited as an example of a food pairing
(16:30):
type drink, meaning that the two ingredients taste differently apart
than they do together. And this is because chemistry. Yeah. Yeah,
The molecules that give gin and tonic their flavor are
very similarly structured, so they attract and create aggregates that
change the taste more than the sum of their parts. Yeah.
So how did all of this get started? Yes, as
(16:55):
you might have gathered from that Churchill quote, we largely
have the British to think for the Gin and tonic,
And according to Slate, there was a period of time
when the G and T was quote as essential a
weapon for the British Empire as the Gatlinga, which is
a big claim, big claim. Yeah, and it turns out
that it's kind of true. Yeah, kind of, but let's
(17:18):
find out. Yes. As with most things, the origin story
of gin is a little difficult history to pin down,
but a sixteenth century Dutch physician, Celsius de bulb uh
He developed a highly alcoholic medicinal concoction called geneva um.
(17:40):
He used the essential oils of juniper berries, which he
believed was a curative and a circulation improver. Yeah, a
lot of alcohol started out as a curative. Yes, they're like, oh, yes,
this thing is healthy. We should definitely absolutely drink more
of it. Right, And the juniper berry, which comes from
(18:02):
a coniferous plant, has a history of being thought of
as this medicinal thing, going all the way back to
Italian monks using distilled spirits flavored with juniper berries as
a not actually working remedy for the plague. Oh yeah, well,
I guess at a certain point you're going to try
anything that you've got. That's true. I probably didn't make
(18:22):
things worse. Maybe it did. I think. I think at
the point of the plague, you you're not her in trouble. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it might have made you feel better, I guess if
you Yeah, one can hope. Um. The story goes that
the English first encountered Gin either during the Dutch War
(18:45):
of Independence during the fifteen eighties or the thirty Year
War that took place from sixteen eighteen to sixteen, and
they gave it the nickname Dutch Courage or Gin, a
shortened version of Geneva. Yeah. Uh, And once William of
Orange became King of England. After the Glorious Revolution of
(19:06):
Jin's popularity increased dramatically due to high tears placed on
the previously more popular hard liquor of the day, French brandy,
which motivated the English to find ways to make cheap
and they did, they really did. It was so very
cheap and and was used again in in a medicinal
kind of fashion. It was used to ease hunger, pains,
(19:28):
warm you against the cold, distract you from brutal, thankless
factory work, you know, and and give you a buzz right,
you know, get that positive fun thing out of it too. Um. Also,
if the stillers couldn't find or didn't want to buy
juniper berries, they'd use turpentine or other horrible you should
not be drinking this type things. Yeah. Gin rooms typically
(19:52):
came with this signage over their door quote drunk for
a penny, dead, drunk for twopennies, clean straw for thing,
but the straw is usually soaked in foment. Yes, drink
responsibly kids. You probably should have said that at the
top of the podcast. Oh you're getting it now, you
(20:16):
made it this part, yes, um. English gin consumption would
skyrocket in the eighteenth century, leading to an uptick of
public drunkenness followed by the gin craze. It was a
freak out among those more well off the morality of
drinking gin. And this was my favorite part of the
(20:38):
beef Ever tour, by the way. It was like a
haunted house. It was like you were suddenly in a
haunted house because they had it like old London streets
and it was dark and there are people screaming and crying.
It was crazy. It sounds I hadn't thought about it
this way before, but this totally sounds like like reefer madness. Yeah, yeah,
(20:58):
it was really cool, but but but I mean kind of.
At the time, there were some terrible things happening because
of the the cheapness and the availability of gin in London.
The death rates surpassed the birth rate, and of babies
died by the age of five. Mothers with newborns would
give babies gin to calm them down. Um. The moms
(21:21):
themselves were sometimes addicted to gin and didn't provide their
children with much attention. They're giving that attention to the
gin um are or babies were born with fetal alcohol
syndrome and because women were more often impacted than men.
Jin earned nicknames like quote, Ladies Delight and Mother's Ruin,
(21:41):
and that one is still around to this day Truan
and some popular gin bars are called that. Oh, and
this is very important. The gin we're talking about in
old London, that that's not today's jim. No. No, we
have improved distillation technologies, uh, safety regulations which are pretty
(22:03):
okay sometimes. Yes, And according to a Vice article I
read quote the gin of the eighteenth century was a
throat searing. I read in ing vomit, churning hell broth,
hell broth. Yeah. Oh, Vice has a way of putting things.
I have to say, hell broth. I might be hesitant
(22:26):
to and vibe hell broth, but I don't know. I
kind of want to try it. It would depend if
it was a Halloween type situation. I'd give it a go.
I mean, I'm I'm in first step anyway. I drank
mold this week. That's true. We've had adventures. We have
watched the videos. Well. Despite the fact that I would
try hell broth, and certainly a lot of the English
(22:49):
were apparently more than trying hell broth. Uh. Not everyone
was on board for all of this. All of this
crazy gin behavior, and the government had a few things
to say about it, and we'll get to those after
a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
(23:18):
we're back, thank you, sponsor. So, in response to this
gin panic, the English Parliament drafted a series of laws
um eight Gin Acts to be exact, and these were
aimed at minimizing gin drinking during the seventeen thirties, in
in what historians compared to our modern day war on drugs.
The first Gin Act, a steep tax on jin, had
(23:41):
this glaring loophole, though, and the gin was defined as
something that had quote juniper berries or other fruit spices
or ingredients. Yeah, so people just didn't add those things
and therefore made what they what they called parliamentary brandy
m hm, and that kind of There was another Gin Act,
(24:06):
and they also people found a way around that one.
And then in four Judith de four killed her baby
and sold the babies clothes to buy gin, which resulted
in the third Gin Act, prohibiting sale of gin over
two gallons and enacting a stiff tariff of one pound
per gallon on top of the fifty pound annual license
(24:29):
fee required to sell it. And this did a good
job of putting legitimate sellers out of business and replacing
them with corner sellers who peddled dangerous, cheap stuff that
blinded and or killed people. Because we all know it's
always really good when you when a government tries to
crack down on I think the people really like yeah
(24:51):
uh it. And the Fourth Jen Act also rewarded and
protected informants, people who would tell the police give the
police information about it was selling gin, who was drinking gin.
But informants had to note the name of the renter
of a property selling gin for the authorities to act
on their tip. So Captain Dudley brad Street. Captain Dudley
(25:14):
brad Street, he sounds like an upstanding gentleman. Not really,
probably not. He circumvented this in seventeen thirty eight by
having a friend rent a house in London where he
nailed the sign of a cat in the window and
hit a pipe underneath the cat's paw. Captain Bradstreet got
some food, thirteen pounds worth of gin, and barricaded himself inside.
(25:36):
After he had spread the word that the next day
Jen would be available from a cat in the alley.
I'd be intrigued customers place coins and a slot over
the cat's mouth, and the captain slowly poured gin from
the pipe underneath the cat's paw. And he did this
for three months before copycats caused him to move on.
(25:59):
But despite what you might think and what I thought,
this probably isn't where old tom gin comes from. But
it did lead to the creation of puss and mews
houses where nyws like yeah, not like mus an idea yeah,
where a customer wanting to buy jin from a vendor
in some secluded space would say puss and the vendor
(26:20):
would say muse and reveal a drawer that the customer
would put their money in, which the vendor took and
then pushed it back out. But now magically it had ah.
That was magic, magic, a great kind of magic. H
But but but the but the people would We're not
(26:40):
having this. They wanted their gin. They did, And by
seventy three people were rioting in protest to these tariffs,
and despite the tariffs, Londoners were consuming eleven million gallons
of gin annually. By seventeen fifty, gin informers were killed
on the streets, sometimes by mobs who seventeen hundred social
(27:02):
historian Thomas Felding wrote in a political pamphlet about the
destruction GIN was reeking on what he called the quote
inferior people um. And he wrote, quote, A new kind
of drunkenness, unknown to our ancestors, is lately sprung up
among us, which, if not put to a stop, will
infallibly destroy a great part of the inferior people. The
(27:26):
drunkenness I here intends by this poison called jin, the
principal substenance parentheses, if it may be so called, of
more than a hundred thousand people in this troublous goodness. Yeah,
so yes. The government kept trying the Gin Act of
seventeen fifty one up to the costs of operation for
(27:46):
gin stores um, either due to that or more likely
the rising grain costs that translated to higher gin costs
for customers that encouraged them to switch to the cheaper beer.
Consumption of gin did lesson, but it was still miss
or mr popularity as spirits go in Britain. M hmmm.
And I just want to mention here that there's a
(28:09):
terrifying picture about the immoral stuff caused by Jin called
jin Lane by William Hogarth. And I stared at it,
discovering one horrifying thing after another for a long time.
On my store of b theater, Go go look it up.
If you're looking for something disturbing. It's oddly mesmerizing and terrifying. Well,
(28:32):
William Hogarth jin lane, go check it out. And the
negative connotation Jin earned during this Jin craze is still
around to this day and in phrases like gin joint,
jin drunk and soaked that's o gin and gin mills.
And I've never heard the term jin drunk, by the way,
but apparently this is becoming mean our emotional when you're drunk. Yeah,
(28:54):
so that's that's gin. Yeah. Now we should talk for
a moment about tonic. We should the other key ingredients. Yes,
so the tonic that we know today a sugar sweetened
carbonated soda that's flavored with the bitter tangy. Quinine is
also a thing that originated as a medicine, and specifically
(29:15):
as a treatment for malaria. Well now, Quinine is a
compound that occurs in nature, specifically in the bark of
a large shrub and or small tree called the Saint ConA,
which is native to the Andes Mountains in South America.
Unlike the Sancona, malaria is not native to South America.
The Spanish brought it with them during their invasion and colonization,
(29:36):
starting with Christopher Columbus in the late fourteen hundreds. He's
gonna show open every episode, one day, one day, Christopher.
And malaria was a really huge problem throughout Europe at
that time, where it was generally called the ague. Up
through the mid sixteen hundreds, no one knew what to
do about it. Folks would come down with this mysterious
(29:57):
flu like fever that would come and go and would
frequently cause complications leading to death, and a lot of
people were doing this. Although it didn't help that the
medicine in Europe was still focused on the humors um
and popular wisdom was that you should bleed or or
purge a patient with au ah. Other potential cures were astrology,
(30:20):
of course, and reportedly this one's my favorite, throwing a
patient head first into a shrub and encouraging him to
disentangle himself faster than the disease could disentangle itself. How
the disease disentangle itself because it's a it's a it's
like a little spirit that's hanging out with you. And
so if you can get up faster than the disease,
(30:42):
then you leave the disease in the shrub. I see
totally logical. Completely. I don't know why I haven't tried this.
I need to get someone to throw me ahead first,
like some I've got any kind of like cold that
won't go Also, Kyle, no worries. But in the sixt thirties, though,
and Augustinian monk by the name of Antonio di Colancha,
I think, wrote home about the powdered bark of this
(31:05):
Peruvian tree that was working wonders for the treatment of
a Q. Historians think that probably native people's developed this
cure in the couple hundred years that had been dealing
with malaria and passed it on to the Europeans. But
since Augustinian monk was getting excited about it, Pope Innocent
the Tenth had some of his people look into it,
and over the next hundred years or so it had
(31:27):
become a major European import and a widespread treatment and
preventative for malaria. Because quinine kills the parasite that causes malaria.
It turns out bully. It took a while for the
British to catch on, though, because its associations with the
Catholic Church freaked out a whole lot of Protestants. Oliver
(31:49):
Cromwell supposedly refused treatment with it, leading to his death
in the sixteen fifties, although he also had taiphoid fevers,
so it probably didn't help the situation. None of those things.
But catch on they did, and the Spanish basically had
a monopoly on the Peruvian crops, so they made a mint.
(32:09):
Legend has it that it was sometimes referred to as
bark from the fever tree. I see. Yeah. Meanwhile, throughout
the seventeen hundreds, Europe would go a little bit nuts
about sparkling mineral waters, first taken from natural springs and
then artificially produced through various carbonation processes. It was a
(32:31):
health trend, and also, you know, fizzies are fun um,
but these healthy sparkling beverages were sometimes called tonics, and
Johann Jacob Schwepp, yes what that swept founded the first
carbonated water manufacturing company in Geneva in three mm sparkling
(32:53):
water Aside in eighteen twenty, after decades of scientists searching
for the compound in Santona that makes it such a
effective medicine. These two French pharmacists by the names of
do it for me Annie here Joseph and Joseph Vienna.
I think, oh that's oh see, yeah, that's a lot
better than I would have done. Thinking. The two of
(33:16):
them isolated uh coining and set up a factory for
its extraction in Paris, and this made it possible to
eat slightly less tree bark while attempting to not get malaria,
which I'm sure a lot of people were very fond of. Meanwhile,
as this was happening, the Spanish colonies in South America
were fighting for their independence, and afterward they would attempt
(33:37):
to control the lucrative sin shona industry by limiting or
flat out outlawing the exportation of seeds and cuttings of
sint Chona plants. But despite the price, all of the
conquering empires, including the British, were on board with Sincona
and Quinine and used it to start eradicating malaria in
Europe Throughout the eighteen hundreds. However, malaria was still a
(34:01):
huge problem in the tropics, which is largely where the
conquering empires were getting their conquer on because of sugar
and other stuff sugar, sugar, and this all came to
a head in British run India during the early eighteen hundreds.
People were taking daily doses of crining to prevent malaria.
Because it's so bitter, folks were starting to mix it
(34:22):
with sparkling water and a little bit of sugar, and
thus tonic water was born, which brings us to the
gin and tonic. But first it brings us to a
word from our sponsor, and we're back, thank you sponsor. Okay,
(34:46):
now that we've got a gin, we've got our tonic.
Where did the idea of mixing them come from? Well,
it was kind of a Merry Poppin situation. A spoonful
sugar helps the medicine go down. Around five British soldiers
in India started adding gin to their daily required quiney
tonic water, and also as an added bonus, the British
(35:09):
Navy squeezed in some lime juice to prevent scurvy. And
this is where the nickname for the British lime it
comes from. Oh, I know, I showed have guessed that
a long time ago. I feel very silly, now, Okay,
that's fine. By the eighteen forties, the British population in
India was using, in fact, more than seven hundred tons
(35:29):
a sincona bark per year to fight to fight malaria
there wow. And in eighteen fifty eight the British took
over governance of India from the British East India Company
following the violent Suppoly Revolution also called the Indian Mutiny.
A bunch of other names too, but those are that
those cover the bases um With more British soldiers and
(35:53):
their families in India than ever, the demand for tonic
water increased, which led to Erasmus Bond's creation the first
commercial tonic water in that same year, which you can
still buy. I've never heard of it, me neither, and
that led to schwepps H the Indian Quinine tonic in
eight seventy and both of these went on to find
success outside of India in Britain as well. Meanwhile, Charles Ledger,
(36:17):
an Englishman who became an alpaca farmer in Peru, smuggled
sconnaisseeds out of Peru to his brother during the eighteen
sixties because at the time it was still illegal to
export the trees or the seeds. Right. He actually had
a history of smuggling. He also smuggled alpaca out of
the country. He was just a smuggler, apparently better at
(36:37):
it than Han Solo. He didn't get caught, that's right, oh,
Solo Vern in the Gin and Tonic episode. Anyway, the
British government would not buy these these seeds that he
that he smuggled out, but the Dutch government would and did,
and they set up plantations on Java, which was one
(36:58):
of their colonial outposts. And so by World War One,
the Dutch pretty much dominated the coining trade, and by
the end of the century they controlled nine cent of
the world's supply. That's quite quite a large percentage. This
epitaph reads. By the way Charles Ledger, he gave coining
to the world. H Yeah, and the G and T
(37:23):
was also thought to have played a role in World
War two when the Japanese forces took over Java and
all those Sincona plantations, which equaled most of the world's supply.
According to Amy Stewart's book The Drunk Botanist, which I
absolutely want to read. Yeah, the last American plane out
of Indonesia had four million corining seeds on board, but
(37:44):
to no immediate a veil because the trees would take
too long to grow to be of any use during
the war. But that didn't stop the Allies from planting
trees in Africa at the same time putting scientists work
developing a synthetic replacement. Ah, and both succeeded. To this day,
Africa grew o natural coining and this and the synthetic
version is used in some prescriptions. Yeah, because it's still
(38:06):
used as an antimalarial m HM and for some other things.
But that's a different episode entirely. It is it is.
That's pretty much the history of the gin and tonic.
We obviously, as always had to shorten it. Especially we
didn't talk about how you distill gin. We're going to
do that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we should. We should definitely
(38:28):
do a whole episode about more more gin things. There's
really quite a lot. It's it's such a base alcohol
that there's quite a lot to say about it. And
we also just today as we as we said, we've
got to go see it being distilled. So this is
new knowledge that's park lating in our brains. It's true.
We do have a few closing remarks, Yes, including you
(38:52):
can make your own gin at home using vodka, um,
juniper berries you have to and other botanicals um. And
I know a lot of people say that jen is
basically flavored vodka, and I mean that's true. Yeah, it's
a it's a neutral spirit to which juniper berries have
been added to. That is the definition of chin. Yeah.
(39:12):
I have to say I was surprised when I was like,
how do you make gin? And there were so many
recipes that were just like cheap vodka for berries, And
I was kind of like at that point maybe by
just maybe, but I'm all down for trying things. Yeah,
could it could be great if you want to experiment
with with your own flavors. Then absolutely didn't do it. Yeah.
(39:33):
I mean I I want to go put tea in
some gin right now. It was good. Yeah. Uh, tonic
water glows under black light because not because of the
quining in it. Yeah. So that's a really fun Halloween trick. Um.
If you if you want to make a cheap Halloween decorations,
just toss some coining in some in some vases and
(39:53):
let them go. I thought you're gonna say, like throw
it on the walls that I'm clean up. That wouldn't
be very effective. I would drive pretty fast. Okay. And finally,
here's a quote from Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Oh,
this is so delightful. Gay. Yes, I'm gonna try to
get through these pronunciations, but we'll see. It is as follows,
(40:16):
of all known worlds in the galaxy, be they primitive,
are highly advanced, have invented a drink called gin and tonics,
our gene and Nicks or gene nicks, or any one
of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme.
Douglas Adams. Yes, and that brings us to the end
(40:40):
of this classic episode. We hope that you enjoyed it.
If it is something that you like, we hope a
gin and tonic is in your future. Yes, and we,
as always would love to hear from you. If you
would like to email us, you can. Our email is
Hello at savorpot dot com. We're also on social media.
(41:01):
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
saver Pod. Savor is production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagin
and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we
hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Favor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we've
got a classic episode for you about the Gin and Tonic,
which is one of my very favors both drinks and
episode because it has one of my favorite cocktail facts
about cocktails that I probably of the facts the many
(00:29):
facts we've learned throughout this journey, it's one of the
ones I used the most that probably annoys my friends
because they've heard it before, and every time I'm like,
did you know Malary and the gin and tonic? Insert
story there? Yeah, it's well, it's a good story. Yeah.
This this is a very early episode back from and
(00:53):
um yeah yeah. I usually don't drink gin and tonic.
It's kind of like a treat for me. I try
to avoid, um, sweetened SODA's in in my cocktails. Um,
I'm more likely to order a gin and soda, probably
probably with some bitters in it. But oh man, it
is a gin and tonic is delicious. It's so refreshing.
(01:17):
Um And I know we've talked about it before, but
I was jen is one of my favorite alcohols now,
but it took me so long to come to it.
So Gin and Tonic. I know it has or at
least my friends tell me as a reputation as an
old man's drink, but I never had that association with it,
and I didn't come along to it until verily recently.
(01:40):
And I just adore it. Um. And and I know
we've also said before, but we from this episode we
got to do two videos, not one, but two. We
got to make gin with Old Fourth Distillery, our friends
over at Old Fourth Distillery, and we got to have
a nine am Gin Tonics. Yeah, yeah, it was Both
(02:05):
were incredibly delightful. Those videos are still available I believe
on YouTube and um other places as well. Maybe Yeah,
and uh oh it was. It was really spectacular getting
both both processes, um, not just the having cocktails at
nine am part from No, No, it was fine. It
(02:33):
was fine. Um Bitters is um is shipping by the way,
and they do really spectacular um. I'm not sure the
last time I checked their tonic syrup was sold out. Um.
But yeah, oh they do a great, great, great line
of better really beautiful stuff. Yeah, and the tonic syrup
(02:55):
is amazing. Oh it's so good. Um and really really
just increases your um your capacity to put that that
crnine flavor into various other things. But yeah, the gin
and tonic in general UM has been seeing a bit
of popularity right now, especially in canned form, Like even
(03:16):
outside of the United Kingdom, what I know, canned cocktails
in general are rising in popularity, especially in the US
and Japan. I'm sure you've seen all of those Seltzer's UM,
which I am still a little bit perturbed by, UM,
but that's that's okay. Uh. Apparently after an episode of
(03:39):
Fleabag aired that featured leading characters drinking canned gin and tonics,
specifically from Marks and Spencer. Uh, Marks and Spencer Gin
and Tonics sales spiked. That's excellent. I love that. I
must have this experience immediately right. Oh, it's beautiful. UM.
(04:01):
And I'm also seeing a lot of buzz about pink
gin and Tonic out of the UK, UM pink Gin
being um gin with anger Stora bitters at it. That's
interesting because there's also at the many food festivals we
used to attend when that was a thing. One of
(04:21):
always always I think it was beef Eater would be
there and they would have like a pink just everything
pink booth and I guess it was for their pink gin,
but I always assumed it was sort of a gimmick.
I mean, I guess it sort of is, but yeah,
I mean it turns a lovely color of pink, and
pink has been a very popular color these past few years,
(04:43):
so yeah, I don't know. They also hand out I
have several of pink Fannie packs from them because they
give them out at these events. So I am the
most stylish. I'm so ready to spend summer being so
style in my apartment. Everyone's gonna miss out panty back.
(05:06):
I demand Instagram photos. Oh it's gonna be I'm gonna
be so happening to see Annie style corner. Yeah. Um.
Oh and and also, uh, I guess I guess after it.
You know that um that nest Lee brand that makes
(05:27):
the Little the Little after Dinner chocolate mint things. Yeah. Um,
they released a gin and tonic and mint flavor I
think in Germany, but the packaging is in English. I'm
very confused. Um. Interesting, Yeah, I think I saw that too,
and it seemed like it was well reviewed. Um, I'm
(05:50):
struggling to imagine mint going particularly well in that combination
of flavors. But uh, but you know, I'm happy if
people are happy. We always want that. Um. When I
did my cursory gin and tonic search, I think the
two things that stood out to me was one, this
(06:13):
Australia distillery accidentally filled bottles of what was labeled as
gin with hand sanitizer. Oh oh no, but luckily it
was all fine. Uh no one was seriously injured, but one,
I think one Jin Jenker left a review that said
it was horrible. Oh no, oh dear, yes, but it
(06:35):
was all corrected, it was fine, and then not gin
and tonic related at all, but made me giggle. Uh.
A result came up that said Delta is introducing beer
and wine flights, which I'm very curious about but also
interesting timing. But hey, I want your beer flight on
(06:58):
a flight. Okay, yeah, yeah, well I did see that. Yeah,
they're they're opening, Um, they're opening back up because for
for a while they weren't doing any booze service or
drink service I think, other than maybe bottled water on flights,
and so I know that they're opening back up. Not cocktails,
but beer and wine on flights now. Ah, but god, yeah,
(07:22):
I don't know, interesting, interesting, m flying places I miss.
I miss a lot of stuff right now, y'all. Yes, yeah,
but I have the stuff for Gin and Tonic refrigerator
or did that later today? Oh? I do not. Oh,
(07:42):
I've been meaning to get some gin. I've been on
I've been on a pretty serious whiskey kick, um this
past few months. Oh sure, sure, no complaints. Um. One
of the I do keep running out of fizzy water
because I all so, I'm not going to the store
very often, and so I just my roommate and I
(08:04):
just run right through it. So it's yeah, yeah, you
gotta plan these things out. We were talking about this
before the show. My very intense scheduler. Now is not
all my social events, although that's on there too, it's
what am I eating for the next thing? Oh my gosh.
(08:24):
Yeah yeah. Um, but yes, so we have this episode
about Gin and Tonic for you, and we're gonna let
former Annie and Lauren take it away. Hello, and welcome
(08:45):
to food Stuff. I'm Anyries and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And
this is the second edition of our cocktail our. Yes,
still no cocktails though, oh no, we don't know. We
we both have water don't we We do, but we
did to come straight from a distillery in Atlanta that
makes gin. Yeah, and we sampled some of the gin there.
(09:05):
We did way before lunch, that's true, but it was
for work, so for strictly research related purposes. It was
uh and it's old Fourth Distillery in Atlanta, and it
was awesome. Yeah, oh yeah, it was. It was really
really cool getting to watch the process of how gin
gets made. And we'll have a video on that out
(09:28):
around the time that this podcast comes out. Yes, and
this is probably the time when we should mention the
cocktail we are discussing. Yes, what you might know from
the from the title of the episode two. Oh yeah,
I hope so. But yeah, it's always good to get
that out there in the beginning. Oh yes, ye, Gin
and Tonic, Yes, that's what we're talking about today, right
(09:50):
or the G and T that's also called sometimes also
called gin tonic without the end, and right now it's
having a bit of a resurgence, a little bit of
a moment it in the past couple of years, particularly
in Spain, where it's sort of a national drink and
borderline obsession. Really. Yeah, they have like a variation on
(10:10):
it that has more ice and a garnish, and it's
served in a balloon glass that purportedly enhances your ability
to smell the drink. I have had one of these
um and it was lovely, and it came with one
of those big excuse circulars. Yeah. Those always make me
really happy. Yeah. Yeah that then again, as we found out,
(10:32):
as we find out every time we go on a
shoot together, very easily entertained. Yes, both of us are like,
there's bubbles, bubbles. The people working are like, okay, we're enthusiastic. Yes,
it's it's a positive, Yes, I think so. At any rate.
The Gin and Tonic UM, which I very much enjoy,
(10:55):
even just the regular way um, of course, has long
been a go to in Britain, where you can even
buy it in pre mixed cans, which I find slightly horrifying,
to be super honest. Yeah, I saw one of those
and I thought it was like, it kind of looks
similar to a fresca if anyone's familiar with that. So
I went to kind of examine it more closely. Oh,
(11:16):
this is a Jenny tonic, okay. Winston Churchill once said
that quote. The Gin and Tonic has saved more englishmen's
lives and minds than all the doctors in the empire. Wow,
and the New York Times called the year of the
Gin and Tonic. But the gin and tonic has not
(11:37):
always been this trinity summer drink. Yeah. Uh, more on
that in a moment. But first, what's gin and tonic? Annie? Well, Lauren,
I'll tell you it is a highball cocktail, which is
basically just an alcohol based spirit mixed with a larger
percentage of a mixer. And the alcohol base in this
(11:59):
case is you guessed it, gent gin And what could
the mixer be, It's tonic. Um. The order of operations
here typically is the gin, the tonic, lime juice if
you want it, that's optional, and ice. I've seen it
done other ways, but that's mostly what I came across
when I was researching this. And then a lime wedger
(12:21):
or twist to garnish rights. And typically the istio of
gin two tonic is somewhere between one to one or
one to three. And yeah, the lime wedge pretty important.
But that's it. Yeah, I mean, of course there's there's variations. Yeah, obviously, um,
popular ones put in at Angusta Angerstora I think okay,
(12:43):
we think mint and all kinds of tonic water things.
There's whatever tonic you choose to put in there. Yes,
there's so many options there. There's artisanal tonic water. My
boyfriend and pretty much everyone I talked to about it
in London's is by fever Tree, excellent brand. Um. You
can make your own tonic sirup, or you can do
(13:05):
both and mixing together. Yeah, there's a lot of options there. Um.
And since there are only two ingredients and there's usually
more tonic water than gin, you want to make sure
that you like the tonic water you're using if you
want to enjoy your beverage. Yes, And and it helps
if you like the gin that you're using as well. Yeah,
this is a drink that I think you really don't
(13:27):
want to get the cheap stuff. Um. And a personal
note for me, I did not know I liked gin
and tonics until fairly recently because I was just drinking,
just drinking terrible, terrible gin and probably terrible tonic juice.
I was one of those people that was like it
days like a iron tree. Did you just call it
tonic juice? Yeah? That was pretty cool? Patented Yes, yes, Um,
(13:54):
my favorite every day affordable gin of choices eat or
twenty four by the way, and I did a tour
of their Uh I almost said, fury, that's not correct.
Distillery in London when I was there, and it was
really really cool. It's really neat man. Yeah, all the
distilleries now, just from now on, it's all I want
to do. Go visit distilleries, work on that I find.
(14:16):
I wanted to put in that I find New Amsterdam
perfectly acceptable. But of course nice gents are nice. Um
number three London Dry might be my personal favorite. Sometimes
occasionally I like alcohol. Yeah, I mean, work with what
you got. But I do think that this is one
of the drinks that if you can get something a
(14:38):
little better, like the one I said, is only only
twenty bucks, So that's not terrible, not at all. Yeah.
But back to tonic water right. Bars in the US
have been criticized for using a soda gun for the
tonic water part um and that stuff, according to some
chefs or um b soologists, that doesn't have quinine in it.
(15:03):
It may or may not. It may or may not,
which is a bitter ingredient that we're going to talk
about a lot more and it's very important. It's this
whole thing. It's it's what makes tonic water taste like
tonic water, right, um, And that's why I mixologists suggest
to your questra tonic water out of a bottle. If
that sounds to me like I should have just saved
some bucks and ordered something else or made my own
(15:25):
at home. Up to you, to you, and yeah, the
key to this drink is balancing this bitter flavor of
the tonic water with the kind of flowery botanical herbal
herby kind of kind of flavors of the gin. Right,
And the key botanical the key ingredient is juniper in
(15:49):
the gin. Yes, it's the most prominent. Note it has
to be the most prominent. Note. You have to have juniper.
This is very serious, and not just to annie. But
but annie is illegally okay, oh that is serious. Good
in collagen, yes, okay, um. But but of course there's
lots of other ingredients and gin makers use to flavor
(16:09):
their products all kinds of stuff. Yeah, lemon peels, coriander seed,
almonds or liquor shoot, and angelica seed and they're so so,
so so many. The one that I like they use
tea I believe goodness. Yeah, And the Gin and Tonic
has been cited as an example of a food pairing
(16:30):
type drink, meaning that the two ingredients taste differently apart
than they do together. And this is because chemistry. Yeah. Yeah,
The molecules that give gin and tonic their flavor are
very similarly structured, so they attract and create aggregates that
change the taste more than the sum of their parts. Yeah.
So how did all of this get started? Yes, as
(16:55):
you might have gathered from that Churchill quote, we largely
have the British to think for the Gin and tonic,
And according to Slate, there was a period of time
when the G and T was quote as essential a
weapon for the British Empire as the Gatlinga, which is
a big claim, big claim. Yeah, and it turns out
that it's kind of true. Yeah, kind of, but let's
(17:18):
find out. Yes. As with most things, the origin story
of gin is a little difficult history to pin down,
but a sixteenth century Dutch physician, Celsius de bulb uh
He developed a highly alcoholic medicinal concoction called geneva um.
(17:40):
He used the essential oils of juniper berries, which he
believed was a curative and a circulation improver. Yeah, a
lot of alcohol started out as a curative. Yes, they're like, oh, yes,
this thing is healthy. We should definitely absolutely drink more
of it. Right, And the juniper berry, which comes from
(18:02):
a coniferous plant, has a history of being thought of
as this medicinal thing, going all the way back to
Italian monks using distilled spirits flavored with juniper berries as
a not actually working remedy for the plague. Oh yeah, well,
I guess at a certain point you're going to try
anything that you've got. That's true. I probably didn't make
(18:22):
things worse. Maybe it did. I think. I think at
the point of the plague, you you're not her in trouble. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it might have made you feel better, I guess if
you Yeah, one can hope. Um. The story goes that
the English first encountered Gin either during the Dutch War
(18:45):
of Independence during the fifteen eighties or the thirty Year
War that took place from sixteen eighteen to sixteen, and
they gave it the nickname Dutch Courage or Gin, a
shortened version of Geneva. Yeah. Uh, And once William of
Orange became King of England. After the Glorious Revolution of
(19:06):
Jin's popularity increased dramatically due to high tears placed on
the previously more popular hard liquor of the day, French brandy,
which motivated the English to find ways to make cheap
and they did, they really did. It was so very
cheap and and was used again in in a medicinal
kind of fashion. It was used to ease hunger, pains,
(19:28):
warm you against the cold, distract you from brutal, thankless
factory work, you know, and and give you a buzz right,
you know, get that positive fun thing out of it too. Um. Also,
if the stillers couldn't find or didn't want to buy
juniper berries, they'd use turpentine or other horrible you should
not be drinking this type things. Yeah. Gin rooms typically
(19:52):
came with this signage over their door quote drunk for
a penny, dead, drunk for twopennies, clean straw for thing,
but the straw is usually soaked in foment. Yes, drink
responsibly kids. You probably should have said that at the
top of the podcast. Oh you're getting it now, you
(20:16):
made it this part, yes, um. English gin consumption would
skyrocket in the eighteenth century, leading to an uptick of
public drunkenness followed by the gin craze. It was a
freak out among those more well off the morality of
drinking gin. And this was my favorite part of the
(20:38):
beef Ever tour, by the way. It was like a
haunted house. It was like you were suddenly in a
haunted house because they had it like old London streets
and it was dark and there are people screaming and crying.
It was crazy. It sounds I hadn't thought about it
this way before, but this totally sounds like like reefer madness. Yeah, yeah,
(20:58):
it was really cool, but but but I mean kind of.
At the time, there were some terrible things happening because
of the the cheapness and the availability of gin in London.
The death rates surpassed the birth rate, and of babies
died by the age of five. Mothers with newborns would
give babies gin to calm them down. Um. The moms
(21:21):
themselves were sometimes addicted to gin and didn't provide their
children with much attention. They're giving that attention to the
gin um are or babies were born with fetal alcohol
syndrome and because women were more often impacted than men.
Jin earned nicknames like quote, Ladies Delight and Mother's Ruin,
(21:41):
and that one is still around to this day Truan
and some popular gin bars are called that. Oh, and
this is very important. The gin we're talking about in
old London, that that's not today's jim. No. No, we
have improved distillation technologies, uh, safety regulations which are pretty
(22:03):
okay sometimes. Yes, And according to a Vice article I
read quote the gin of the eighteenth century was a
throat searing. I read in ing vomit, churning hell broth,
hell broth. Yeah. Oh, Vice has a way of putting things.
I have to say, hell broth. I might be hesitant
(22:26):
to and vibe hell broth, but I don't know. I
kind of want to try it. It would depend if
it was a Halloween type situation. I'd give it a go.
I mean, I'm I'm in first step anyway. I drank
mold this week. That's true. We've had adventures. We have
watched the videos. Well. Despite the fact that I would
try hell broth, and certainly a lot of the English
(22:49):
were apparently more than trying hell broth. Uh. Not everyone
was on board for all of this. All of this
crazy gin behavior, and the government had a few things
to say about it, and we'll get to those after
a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
(23:18):
we're back, thank you, sponsor. So, in response to this
gin panic, the English Parliament drafted a series of laws
um eight Gin Acts to be exact, and these were
aimed at minimizing gin drinking during the seventeen thirties, in
in what historians compared to our modern day war on drugs.
The first Gin Act, a steep tax on jin, had
(23:41):
this glaring loophole, though, and the gin was defined as
something that had quote juniper berries or other fruit spices
or ingredients. Yeah, so people just didn't add those things
and therefore made what they what they called parliamentary brandy
m hm, and that kind of There was another Gin Act,
(24:06):
and they also people found a way around that one.
And then in four Judith de four killed her baby
and sold the babies clothes to buy gin, which resulted
in the third Gin Act, prohibiting sale of gin over
two gallons and enacting a stiff tariff of one pound
per gallon on top of the fifty pound annual license
(24:29):
fee required to sell it. And this did a good
job of putting legitimate sellers out of business and replacing
them with corner sellers who peddled dangerous, cheap stuff that
blinded and or killed people. Because we all know it's
always really good when you when a government tries to
crack down on I think the people really like yeah
(24:51):
uh it. And the Fourth Jen Act also rewarded and
protected informants, people who would tell the police give the
police information about it was selling gin, who was drinking gin.
But informants had to note the name of the renter
of a property selling gin for the authorities to act
on their tip. So Captain Dudley brad Street. Captain Dudley
(25:14):
brad Street, he sounds like an upstanding gentleman. Not really,
probably not. He circumvented this in seventeen thirty eight by
having a friend rent a house in London where he
nailed the sign of a cat in the window and
hit a pipe underneath the cat's paw. Captain Bradstreet got
some food, thirteen pounds worth of gin, and barricaded himself inside.
(25:36):
After he had spread the word that the next day
Jen would be available from a cat in the alley.
I'd be intrigued customers place coins and a slot over
the cat's mouth, and the captain slowly poured gin from
the pipe underneath the cat's paw. And he did this
for three months before copycats caused him to move on.
(25:59):
But despite what you might think and what I thought,
this probably isn't where old tom gin comes from. But
it did lead to the creation of puss and mews
houses where nyws like yeah, not like mus an idea yeah,
where a customer wanting to buy jin from a vendor
in some secluded space would say puss and the vendor
(26:20):
would say muse and reveal a drawer that the customer
would put their money in, which the vendor took and
then pushed it back out. But now magically it had ah.
That was magic, magic, a great kind of magic. H
But but but the but the people would We're not
(26:40):
having this. They wanted their gin. They did, And by
seventy three people were rioting in protest to these tariffs,
and despite the tariffs, Londoners were consuming eleven million gallons
of gin annually. By seventeen fifty, gin informers were killed
on the streets, sometimes by mobs who seventeen hundred social
(27:02):
historian Thomas Felding wrote in a political pamphlet about the
destruction GIN was reeking on what he called the quote
inferior people um. And he wrote, quote, A new kind
of drunkenness, unknown to our ancestors, is lately sprung up
among us, which, if not put to a stop, will
infallibly destroy a great part of the inferior people. The
(27:26):
drunkenness I here intends by this poison called jin, the
principal substenance parentheses, if it may be so called, of
more than a hundred thousand people in this troublous goodness. Yeah,
so yes. The government kept trying the Gin Act of
seventeen fifty one up to the costs of operation for
(27:46):
gin stores um, either due to that or more likely
the rising grain costs that translated to higher gin costs
for customers that encouraged them to switch to the cheaper beer.
Consumption of gin did lesson, but it was still miss
or mr popularity as spirits go in Britain. M hmmm.
And I just want to mention here that there's a
(28:09):
terrifying picture about the immoral stuff caused by Jin called
jin Lane by William Hogarth. And I stared at it,
discovering one horrifying thing after another for a long time.
On my store of b theater, Go go look it up.
If you're looking for something disturbing. It's oddly mesmerizing and terrifying. Well,
(28:32):
William Hogarth jin lane, go check it out. And the
negative connotation Jin earned during this Jin craze is still
around to this day and in phrases like gin joint,
jin drunk and soaked that's o gin and gin mills.
And I've never heard the term jin drunk, by the way,
but apparently this is becoming mean our emotional when you're drunk. Yeah,
(28:54):
so that's that's gin. Yeah. Now we should talk for
a moment about tonic. We should the other key ingredients. Yes,
so the tonic that we know today a sugar sweetened
carbonated soda that's flavored with the bitter tangy. Quinine is
also a thing that originated as a medicine, and specifically
(29:15):
as a treatment for malaria. Well now, Quinine is a
compound that occurs in nature, specifically in the bark of
a large shrub and or small tree called the Saint ConA,
which is native to the Andes Mountains in South America.
Unlike the Sancona, malaria is not native to South America.
The Spanish brought it with them during their invasion and colonization,
(29:36):
starting with Christopher Columbus in the late fourteen hundreds. He's
gonna show open every episode, one day, one day, Christopher.
And malaria was a really huge problem throughout Europe at
that time, where it was generally called the ague. Up
through the mid sixteen hundreds, no one knew what to
do about it. Folks would come down with this mysterious
(29:57):
flu like fever that would come and go and would
frequently cause complications leading to death, and a lot of
people were doing this. Although it didn't help that the
medicine in Europe was still focused on the humors um
and popular wisdom was that you should bleed or or
purge a patient with au ah. Other potential cures were astrology,
(30:20):
of course, and reportedly this one's my favorite, throwing a
patient head first into a shrub and encouraging him to
disentangle himself faster than the disease could disentangle itself. How
the disease disentangle itself because it's a it's a it's
like a little spirit that's hanging out with you. And
so if you can get up faster than the disease,
(30:42):
then you leave the disease in the shrub. I see
totally logical. Completely. I don't know why I haven't tried this.
I need to get someone to throw me ahead first,
like some I've got any kind of like cold that
won't go Also, Kyle, no worries. But in the sixt thirties, though,
and Augustinian monk by the name of Antonio di Colancha,
I think, wrote home about the powdered bark of this
(31:05):
Peruvian tree that was working wonders for the treatment of
a Q. Historians think that probably native people's developed this
cure in the couple hundred years that had been dealing
with malaria and passed it on to the Europeans. But
since Augustinian monk was getting excited about it, Pope Innocent
the Tenth had some of his people look into it,
and over the next hundred years or so it had
(31:27):
become a major European import and a widespread treatment and
preventative for malaria. Because quinine kills the parasite that causes malaria.
It turns out bully. It took a while for the
British to catch on, though, because its associations with the
Catholic Church freaked out a whole lot of Protestants. Oliver
(31:49):
Cromwell supposedly refused treatment with it, leading to his death
in the sixteen fifties, although he also had taiphoid fevers,
so it probably didn't help the situation. None of those things.
But catch on they did, and the Spanish basically had
a monopoly on the Peruvian crops, so they made a mint.
(32:09):
Legend has it that it was sometimes referred to as
bark from the fever tree. I see. Yeah. Meanwhile, throughout
the seventeen hundreds, Europe would go a little bit nuts
about sparkling mineral waters, first taken from natural springs and
then artificially produced through various carbonation processes. It was a
(32:31):
health trend, and also, you know, fizzies are fun um,
but these healthy sparkling beverages were sometimes called tonics, and
Johann Jacob Schwepp, yes what that swept founded the first
carbonated water manufacturing company in Geneva in three mm sparkling
(32:53):
water Aside in eighteen twenty, after decades of scientists searching
for the compound in Santona that makes it such a
effective medicine. These two French pharmacists by the names of
do it for me Annie here Joseph and Joseph Vienna.
I think, oh that's oh see, yeah, that's a lot
better than I would have done. Thinking. The two of
(33:16):
them isolated uh coining and set up a factory for
its extraction in Paris, and this made it possible to
eat slightly less tree bark while attempting to not get malaria,
which I'm sure a lot of people were very fond of. Meanwhile,
as this was happening, the Spanish colonies in South America
were fighting for their independence, and afterward they would attempt
(33:37):
to control the lucrative sin shona industry by limiting or
flat out outlawing the exportation of seeds and cuttings of
sint Chona plants. But despite the price, all of the
conquering empires, including the British, were on board with Sincona
and Quinine and used it to start eradicating malaria in
Europe Throughout the eighteen hundreds. However, malaria was still a
(34:01):
huge problem in the tropics, which is largely where the
conquering empires were getting their conquer on because of sugar
and other stuff sugar, sugar, and this all came to
a head in British run India during the early eighteen hundreds.
People were taking daily doses of crining to prevent malaria.
Because it's so bitter, folks were starting to mix it
(34:22):
with sparkling water and a little bit of sugar, and
thus tonic water was born, which brings us to the
gin and tonic. But first it brings us to a
word from our sponsor, and we're back, thank you sponsor. Okay,
(34:46):
now that we've got a gin, we've got our tonic.
Where did the idea of mixing them come from? Well,
it was kind of a Merry Poppin situation. A spoonful
sugar helps the medicine go down. Around five British soldiers
in India started adding gin to their daily required quiney
tonic water, and also as an added bonus, the British
(35:09):
Navy squeezed in some lime juice to prevent scurvy. And
this is where the nickname for the British lime it
comes from. Oh, I know, I showed have guessed that
a long time ago. I feel very silly, now, Okay,
that's fine. By the eighteen forties, the British population in
India was using, in fact, more than seven hundred tons
(35:29):
a sincona bark per year to fight to fight malaria
there wow. And in eighteen fifty eight the British took
over governance of India from the British East India Company
following the violent Suppoly Revolution also called the Indian Mutiny.
A bunch of other names too, but those are that
those cover the bases um With more British soldiers and
(35:53):
their families in India than ever, the demand for tonic
water increased, which led to Erasmus Bond's creation the first
commercial tonic water in that same year, which you can
still buy. I've never heard of it, me neither, and
that led to schwepps H the Indian Quinine tonic in
eight seventy and both of these went on to find
success outside of India in Britain as well. Meanwhile, Charles Ledger,
(36:17):
an Englishman who became an alpaca farmer in Peru, smuggled
sconnaisseeds out of Peru to his brother during the eighteen
sixties because at the time it was still illegal to
export the trees or the seeds. Right. He actually had
a history of smuggling. He also smuggled alpaca out of
the country. He was just a smuggler, apparently better at
(36:37):
it than Han Solo. He didn't get caught, that's right, oh,
Solo Vern in the Gin and Tonic episode. Anyway, the
British government would not buy these these seeds that he
that he smuggled out, but the Dutch government would and did,
and they set up plantations on Java, which was one
(36:58):
of their colonial outposts. And so by World War One,
the Dutch pretty much dominated the coining trade, and by
the end of the century they controlled nine cent of
the world's supply. That's quite quite a large percentage. This
epitaph reads. By the way Charles Ledger, he gave coining
to the world. H Yeah, and the G and T
(37:23):
was also thought to have played a role in World
War two when the Japanese forces took over Java and
all those Sincona plantations, which equaled most of the world's supply.
According to Amy Stewart's book The Drunk Botanist, which I
absolutely want to read. Yeah, the last American plane out
of Indonesia had four million corining seeds on board, but
(37:44):
to no immediate a veil because the trees would take
too long to grow to be of any use during
the war. But that didn't stop the Allies from planting
trees in Africa at the same time putting scientists work
developing a synthetic replacement. Ah, and both succeeded. To this day,
Africa grew o natural coining and this and the synthetic
version is used in some prescriptions. Yeah, because it's still
(38:06):
used as an antimalarial m HM and for some other things.
But that's a different episode entirely. It is it is.
That's pretty much the history of the gin and tonic.
We obviously, as always had to shorten it. Especially we
didn't talk about how you distill gin. We're going to
do that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we should. We should definitely
(38:28):
do a whole episode about more more gin things. There's
really quite a lot. It's it's such a base alcohol
that there's quite a lot to say about it. And
we also just today as we as we said, we've
got to go see it being distilled. So this is
new knowledge that's park lating in our brains. It's true.
We do have a few closing remarks, Yes, including you
(38:52):
can make your own gin at home using vodka, um,
juniper berries you have to and other botanicals um. And
I know a lot of people say that jen is
basically flavored vodka, and I mean that's true. Yeah, it's
a it's a neutral spirit to which juniper berries have
been added to. That is the definition of chin. Yeah.
(39:12):
I have to say I was surprised when I was like,
how do you make gin? And there were so many
recipes that were just like cheap vodka for berries, And
I was kind of like at that point maybe by
just maybe, but I'm all down for trying things. Yeah,
could it could be great if you want to experiment
with with your own flavors. Then absolutely didn't do it. Yeah.
(39:33):
I mean I I want to go put tea in
some gin right now. It was good. Yeah. Uh, tonic
water glows under black light because not because of the
quining in it. Yeah. So that's a really fun Halloween trick. Um.
If you if you want to make a cheap Halloween decorations,
just toss some coining in some in some vases and
(39:53):
let them go. I thought you're gonna say, like throw
it on the walls that I'm clean up. That wouldn't
be very effective. I would drive pretty fast. Okay. And finally,
here's a quote from Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Oh,
this is so delightful. Gay. Yes, I'm gonna try to
get through these pronunciations, but we'll see. It is as follows,
(40:16):
of all known worlds in the galaxy, be they primitive,
are highly advanced, have invented a drink called gin and tonics,
our gene and Nicks or gene nicks, or any one
of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme.
Douglas Adams. Yes, and that brings us to the end
(40:40):
of this classic episode. We hope that you enjoyed it.
If it is something that you like, we hope a
gin and tonic is in your future. Yes, and we,
as always would love to hear from you. If you
would like to email us, you can. Our email is
Hello at savorpot dot com. We're also on social media.
(41:01):
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
saver Pod. Savor is production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagin
and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we
hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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