What an exhausting few days it has been.
I’m travelling to parts of Europe for the next few weeks on a combination of cruise and land tours starting out of Southampton. First order of business was taking the train to Montreal, in order to catch a transatlantic flight into London Gatwick then travelling by car toward Southampton—with a couple of rather interesting detours along the way. Highclere Castle was one. The Bombay Sapphire Distillery was another.
(Yes, there will be stories.)
But somewhere between airports, castles, distilleries and trying to remember what time zone my body thought it was in, I realized something.
I had brought Gin and Tonic State of Mind to a rather appropriate part of the world.
If I was going to explore gin, eventually I had to come to England.
The British didn’t invent gin. Its roots reach back to the juniper-flavoured spirits of continental Europe, particularly Dutch jenever. But Britain certainly developed a relationship with it.
And what a relationship it was.
By the early 1700s, London was in the middle of what became known as the Gin Craze. Gin was cheap, plentiful and consumed with enough enthusiasm that the government repeatedly stepped in to try to control it.
Eventually gin’s reputation changed. Distilling improved. London Dry became a style associated with crisp juniper, citrus and botanicals rather than the questionable concoctions being sold during the Gin Craze.
And somewhere along the way came tonic.
The story of the gin and tonic takes us beyond England to another chapter of British history. Quinine, derived from cinchona bark, was used against malaria, and tonic water developed during the 19th century. By 1868, we find one of the earliest known written references to people calling for “gin and tonics” in British India.
Medicine, history, empire, trade and pleasure somehow ended up together in a glass.
Which brings me to Beefeater.
For Canadians, Beefeater is hardly an exotic discovery. It’s one of those bottles we’ve seen behind bars and on liquor-store shelves forever. In fact, it was the gin of choice served on my train travel at the beginning of this journey which started my exploration of the brand and the historical facts about gin.
Beefeater has been part of London’s gin story since the 19th century. Its founder, James Burrough, was a pharmacist who actually spent time in Toronto before returning to England and purchasing a Chelsea distillery in 1863.
A little Canadian connection I certainly wasn’t expecting.
After 150 years, does the classic still hold up to it’s name?
Beefeater is unquestionably old-school gin. Its London Dry profile is built around juniper, citrus, coriander, angelica and other traditional botanicals, and its current recipe is still inspired by James Burrough’s 19th-century formula. The botanicals are steeped for 24 hours before distillation. In Britain, the standard Beefeater London Dry is currently 40% ABV.
But old-school doesn’t mean obsolete.
The gin is still distilled in London today. And its name comes from those unmistakably British figures pictured on the bottle—the Yeoman Warders of the Tower of London.
Suddenly that familiar bottle looks a little different to me.
But I’ve discovered that sometimes travelling isn’t about finding something you’ve never seen before. Sometimes it’s about seeing something familiar where it came from.
And perhaps that is what travel does.
We leave home thinking we’re going to discover completely new things. Instead, sometimes we travel halfway around the world and discover the stories behind things that were sitting in front of us all along.
So while I’m here, I’m going to do a little field research.
A local pub.
A British gin.
A properly bitter tonic.
Purely in the interest of historical investigation, of course.
Gin and Tonic State of Mind
Life, Served Over Ice.
Beefeaters gin was well known in my family. That bottle was so different from others because of the costume worn by the person pictured on the front. I did not know who it referred to, you informed me. Great!