The History of Gin: From Medicine to Mixology

You may think gin is a distinctly British drink, but the roots of this storied sip actually date back through the Netherlands to ancient Egypt. The word ‘gin’ comes from the Dutch ‘genever.’ This is born from the French word ‘genevre’, which in turn stems from the Latin word for juniper, ‘juniperus’.

Clearly, gin’s history crosses the world. Way back in 1550 BCE, the ancient Egyptians used juniper water as a cure for jaundice.

By 1055, Benedictine monks in Italy were making tonic-wine infused with juniper berries in a medicinal elixir.

In the 1220s, a Belgian medical author noted that juniper berries cooked in wine would cure a host of different illnesses and ailments.

But it wasn’t until a few years later that gin as we know it was born. Next time you sip a Martini, you can thank Arnaud de Villanova for it⁠.

In the thirteenth century AD, Villanova developed the European practice of distillation. The physician and alchemist started distilling wine through, you guessed it, juniper berries. Why juniper? The berry was thought to have healthful properties—at the time of the black plague, doctors would fill masks with juniper berries to protect them from the plague.

Historically, juniper berries were used to help treat kidney infections (though a Martini certainly won’t help that now), and juniper teas were used as a disinfectant for surgeon’s tools. Canadian First Nations peoples would use juniper for tuberculosis and ulcers and apply a juniper salve on wounds.

Villanova’s experiments with this early take on gin ended there. It’s the Dutch who grew the gin category to what we know today.

The Dutch spent a lot of time sailing the high seas through the fifteenth, sixteen, and seventeenth centuries. Their swashbuckling sailors travelled the world, trading with major global powers and bringing their treasures of foreign spices back home to the Netherlands. When the Dutch ships docked at Rotterdam, they unloaded their worldly treasures at a local warehouse in the shipping port of Schiedam. But the fruits, spices, and other raw goods didn’t last long in the warehouses, especially after weeks on the high seas.

Dutch distiller Lucas Bols caught on to this and became a shareholder of the Dutch East India Company. The Dutch started to use a fleet of four hundred pot stills in the warehouses to turn these spices, herbs, and the grains that were also stored at Schiedam into something with a longer shelf life—genever.

As a result of this Dutch ingenuity, brandy was born (or as they knew it, brandewijn, or burned wine). They started doing it with grain beer, which made early forms of gins.

Fun Fact: Gin earned its name ‘Dutch Courage’ because Dutch mercenaries were some of the most ruthless in the world—the British army would frequently hire them to do their dirty work. These mercenaries loved their genever!

Early genever was a rich, whisky-like malt-based alcohol. Juniper was the main part of the brew, but it also included global spices that came off the ships and into the stills. Bols took the concept of a local grain brandy (korenbrandwijn) and added these exotic global spices to the grain-based spirit to make the low-class swill more enticing to the Dutch upper crust.

The idea took off, and genever became the drink of the who’s who in Amsterdam. Given the frequent outbreaks of war with France, brandy was hard to come by. The Dutch started trading the spirit through their ship routes, and the spirit spread across Europe, landing in England.

Gin found popularity in England in the late 1600s, when William III of England, originally a Dutchman, became the king of England, Ireland, and Scotland. In an effort to curb trading from other countries and promote the local economy, he blocked off trading of French wine and Cognac and promoted English-made gin.

With the Dutch and British monarchs bickering, the English Crown convinced British subjects to start distilling Dutch Courage (gin) to get Brits drinking local spirits.

In the 1700s, gin swept the country in what was dubbed the ‘gin craze’ - a period of vice and debauchery. A widespread wave of public drunkenness hit England. Every store in the country started brewing its own concoctions. No licensees were required to make gin, so folks were brewing with anything they could get their hands on.

People caught on that you could replicate the taste of real gin by adding juniper oil and glycerin to moonshine. These semi-poisonous homemade spirits started taking their toll on the population. Gin was dubbed a ‘Mother’s Ruin’ because so many young men were ‘losing their minds’ with gin that they would get fired from their jobs. Gin was blamed for the death of thousands through overconsumption, murder, insanity, and negligence.

After much moral outrage, the British government stepped in and regulated gin distillation with the Gin Act of 1751. It was meant to curb the amount of public drunkenness and illnesses caused by underground distillers that had popped up around the country. The parliament opened ornate, government-run gin distilleries to encourage more civilized ways to sip gin. It quickly became the country’s national tipple. British dandies and ladies sipped gin punches at tennis matches, horse races, and cricket matches.

So, gin became the country’s national spirit, spreading through the British empire to North America, India, and beyond.

In the later 1700s, a slate of poor harvests made gin expensive, so wealthy members of the upper crust began distilling as a hobby. A few of them still boast brands in their name to this day, including Gordon’s and Booth’s.

When phylloxera wiped out French grapes in the nineteenth century, gin - a product that can be made without grapes - surpassed French brandy’s market share.

In the 1830s, a French-born Irishman named Aeneas Coffee invented a new still that made a cleaner, purer spirit in a shorter amount of time.

England is responsible for making gin into a soldier’s spirit. The addition of angostura bitters, an herb-based, high-proof spirit often used to cure stomach ailments, was added to make a medicinal (and delicious) pink gin. Quinine was added to gin to prevent malaria. In India, gin and quinine water became the drink of choice of British expats. Lime cordial was added to make a Gimlet— the citrus prevented scurvy.

English colonizers brought the spirit to far-flung regions around the world. Gin landed in the British colonies in the nineteenth century, but even after the United States gained independence, gin remained a popular spirit.

Americans particularly loved Old Tom, a slightly sweet version of gin. What really put gin on the map in the USA was cocktails. The craft cocktail movement solidified gin as one of the most popular spirits in the world.

There are Martinis, Gin Fizzes, Gimlets, and more. All were served in cocktail bars in the late 1880s in San Francisco, New York, and beyond.

Enter the Prohibition era.

With drinkers desperate to imbibe during the decade-long drought, bathtub gin became all the rage. It didn’t require barrel ageing or tough-to-source ingredients like fresh juniper berries - just moonshine and juniper extract bought from mail-order catalogues.

English bootleggers kept sending gin to bootleggers in Canada and the Bahamas, which was then distributed to the US mob. After Prohibition, gin thrived in the United States.

Gin was so beloved by the navy that when Plymouth was bombed by the Germans in World War II, one sailor declared, “Hitler has lost the war now!”

Gin’s popularity was overshadowed in 1967 when vodka crashed into the market. In the disco era of the 80s and 90s, vodka was crowned the penultimate party drink and gin began disappearing from bar carts and back bars.

Over the past two decades, however, new gins have started hitting the market, reviving interest in the botanical spirit. In recent years, the craft gin movement has exploded, with distillers worldwide pushing the boundaries of tradition. Small-batch gins showcase a range of botanicals, from classic juniper to exotic spices and herbs, appealing to a diverse and discerning audience of gin enthusiasts.

Part of this new guard of gins is actually the old guard. There has been a wave of reissues of historic formulas that died off decades ago—Hayman’s Old Tom gin in 2007 and Plymouth in 2004. In 2008, Bols launched a modern version of genever. The category had come full circle.

As you savor your next gin and tonic or craft cocktail, take a moment to appreciate the centuries of history encapsulated in your glass. From its origins as a medicinal tonic to its prominence in the world of mixology, gin's journey is a testament to its enduring appeal.

Whether you're a fan of classic London Dry gin or a connoisseur of contemporary craft variations, you're partaking in a tradition that spans centuries and continents. Cheers to the spirit that has stood the test of time—gin!

Want more? Check out our podcast episode: A Brief History of Gin