A personal history of gin

When my roommate college was nearing his 21st birthday, he kept saying things like, “When I can do this, we’re going to start drinking a lot of gin and tonics.” I don’t think I had any idea what a gin and tonic tasted like before then – the only thing I knew about them was that in a video of our moving-away-from-Berkeley party, one of our friends – dressed in drag, in one of my mom’s dresses – got a big laugh when he fretted about losing his gin and tonic, so I gathered that my mom used to like them before switching over to vodka.

But once EDS crossed the line into adulthood (defined in alcohol-purchasing-ability, of course), we were setting aside 20 bucks a week for a Friday night trip to the liquor store. If we had more than 20, we could get a liter bottle, but usually we had to settle for 750 ml’s. We tried Tanqueray and Bombay, and were quite happy with them – until one day we decided to spring for the Bombay Sapphire. We spent a lot of time in the room, staring at the bottle – the ingredients etched into the side, the higher alcohol content. We smelled it, and man, we drank it.

A few months into this gin phase, we discovered something gross, and utterly delicious: a lime wedge from the previous night, left to sit in a glass with melted ice and some gin? It made the gin and tonic supersonic, as we would say. The lime flavors were concentrated and flowery, and we found that when we couldn’t get Sapphire, this lime trick was a great way to mimic some of the enhanced flavors without spending the extra cash. We would have people over for g and t’s and explain the nuances of this trick – it helped you save money on gin and also on limes, since one lime became enough to get you through the weekend.

That summer, my mom chuckled when she saw me making one. “Add some bitters,” she suggested. "It changes the drink." And it certainly did. Except I sort of outgrew Sapphire. I wanted something cleaner and less flowery, so I went back to Tanqueray. My switch was buoyed by a friend’s revelation that one of my professors drank Tanqueray on the rocks when he went out.

A few years after college, I noticed new brands on the shelf. Bols was interesting – I first had it in Rio, with fresh Persian lime wedges, and didn’t understand what the waiter was telling me - what the heck was a Bols? It's heavy on the juniper. With enough lime, it tastes like the beach. A few months later, I saw the bottle in a liquor store here and put two and two together. Then Daresbury’s came out, and that was a’ight, it was a’ight. Van Gogh made a gin, and now these new high-end gins were becoming a bit generic to me. And then I found Hendricks, and my life changed completely.

Instead of trying to hide the herby gin flavors with lime, Hendricks offered an opportunity to exacerbate them. More herbs! Embrace the cucumber! And embrace it I did. It has had more staying power than any other gin, in my experience. I occasionally pick up a bottle of Plymouth for martinis if I want to feel like I’m having a working man’s cocktail, but Hendricks is still where it’s at. Not surprisingly, my all-time favorite cocktail is the Cucumber Collins at Hudson. I could easily down five before looking at the time. This is a bad thing.

As scotch began to vie for my attention, I found myself having a hard time choosing between the clear and amber liquors. Even now, I probably go to scotch more often than I should, especially since every time I have a good gin cocktail, I’m reminded that gin really is my first 80-proof love. And with summer right around the corner, I definitely plan to reacquaint myself with Mr. Gin on my rooftop deck.

Fun facts I’ve picked up along a lifetime of gin-love: gin was sort of like the crack cocaine of 17th and 18th century England. It was considered a vile and classless libation, and you sometimes had to procure it from loose women who sold it from under their skirts at public executions. Hogarth’s Gin Lane series is infinitely more laughable than any “Just say no” campaign you might remember from your lifetime.

Impossible to estimate how much gin I’ve consumed, as I did for beer. But here is a partial list of all the states and countries in which I’ve consumed gin:


California
Canada
Colorado
England
Florida
Illinois
Louisiana
Massachussetts
Mexico
New Hampshire
New York
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Oregon
The Netherlands
Rio
Spain
South Africa
Tennessee
Vermont
Washington State
Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia
West Virginia