Indian Gins: No Longer a Footnote
Text by Sugato Mukherjee
The classic G&T is acquiring an Indian inflection. Photo courtesy: Museum Next; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In 1688, King James II was deposed from the throne of England during the Glorious Revolution — a bloodless coup that caused a seismic shift in the way England was governed. The new parliamentary regime introduced a series of amendments to the British constitution and legal system. The protectionist-style economic policy imposed hefty import duties on French wine and cognac, and tax holidays were simultaneously instituted on indigenous, grain-based spirit production.
The results were catastrophic. A sharp dip in the production cost and price of English gin led, unsurprisingly, to an unprecedented rise in its consumption. Early 18th century London, especially the working class, was drowning itself in the quenchless desire for “Madame Geneva” – a sobriquet for the cheap liquor.
The 18th century English novelist Henry Fielding wrote in his 1751 political pamphlet, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, and Related Writings: “A new kind of drunkenness, unknown to our ancestors, is lately sprung up among us, and which if not put a stop to, will infallibly destroy a great part of the inferior people. The drunkenness I here intend is … by this poison called Gin … the principal sustenance (if it may be so called) of more than a hundred thousand people in this Metropolis.”
The working class of 18th century London was drowning itself in gin. Photo courtesy: Secret Gin Club
While “inferior people” was his politically incorrect reference to working class London, Fielding was accurate in his assessment of gin and its destructive effect on the British. Gin distillation was a licence-free affair. This meant the drink was getting infused with hideous impurities like turpentine, sulphuric acid, and sawdust in makeshift tents and seedy roadside vending stalls to increase its potency. There were several incidents of gin-induced drunken brawls, abuses, blindness, death and in a particularly tragic case, filicide.
The cheap buzz was a far cry from genever, gin’s flavourful, juniper-based predecessor with medicinal properties. This wonder liquid was nicknamed the “Dutch Courage” by British soldiers when it was passed to them by their Dutch comrades, while fighting for the “Protestant Cause” during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648).
But in a little over a hundred years, the beverage had fallen from grace — from a fortitudinous military drink, it became England’s most vilified spirit.
The redemption came from a distant land.
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In the early decades of the 19th century, the British East India Company was consolidating its stronghold across the Indian subcontinent, via short term, strategic alliances with princely states. The retinue of British military troops, although not substantial in number, was engaged in constant warfare in a tropical setting that fostered one of the most dreaded diseases of the time: malaria. The mosquito-born malady was a lethal killer; 19th century British graveyards across India still bear testament to the fact that soldiers and civilians, many of them young, succumbed to the disease in very large numbers.
Malaria was a mortal threat to the nascent British Empire.
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Cinchona bark. Photo: H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Quechua people, an Aboriginal tribe of South America, had discovered the medicinal properties of the cinchona, a large flowering shrub native to the Andean rainforests. They used its bark as a muscle relaxant to treat high fevers and severe chills. In the 1630s, Jesuit missionaries brought the bark from Lima to Spain. They crushed it into a thick, coarse powder that was intensely bitter, but easily digestible. Over the next decade, maritime trade routes were established to transport the bark from South America.
From the royal court of France to the papal chamber in the Vatican, cinchona proved its miraculous potency against malaria. In 1650, the noted physician Sebastiano Bado declared that this bark had proved more precious to mankind than all the gold and silver that the Spaniards had obtained from South America.
Two centuries later, in the early decades of the 19th century, the ingredients of cinchona bark were isolated and quinine was extracted from it. The medical world realised that it not only cured malaria but also had amazing preventative powers. By the mid-19th century, the British East India Company’s troops stationed in the tropical wetlands of the Indian subcontinent were utilising 700 tonnes of quinine powder annually as a protective mechanism against malaria, to stay alive and fighting fit for the relentless battles and skirmishes.
Erasmus Bond is believed to have first invented tonic water. Since then, this beloved addition to gin has been recreated all over the world. Photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/scaredykat/, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The harsh bitterness of quinine inspired some home brews with a generous dash of sugar and water. In 1858, an imaginative Brit called Erasmus Bond rustled up an improvised aerated tonic liquid, combining quinine with a whole range of flavouring agents to make a more palatable beverage. This is how tonic water was born. In the next couple of decades, tonic water would evolve into a fast-growing commercial commodity, burgeoning across British colonies, and eventually back in British homes.
Somewhere along the way, a shot or two of gin was added to the tonic water, and all of a sudden, from the ignominy of being the most notorious beverage, gin was both the key player against a dreaded virus and the fortification the British needed — just as important as their guns and steel — to further their colonising ambitions in the Indian subcontinent.
Later, it underwent another transformation. The nutritional tag it carried helped establish gin as a highbrow craft cocktail in colonial-era clubs, planters’ bars and affluent households. In Curries and Bugles, her Raj-era cookbook, Jennifer Brennan writes that “the hour or two before Sunday tiffin was the time for several pristine gimlets or pink gins.”
Like other colonial legacies, gin’s journey in India continued after the days of the Raj were over.
“After Indian independence, the gin and tonic remained as a figment of the Raj in British clubs in India,” said Dr Tulasi Srinivas, Professor of Anthropology at Emerson College, who is writing a book on colonialism and the history of the G&T. “But it was not a popular drink till the nineties.”
Until the ‘90s, as Srinivas writes, gin remained largely a preserve of the elite: a stodgy, stiff-upper lip clubhouse tipple that did not have much appeal for the average Indian.
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In the last few years though, there has been a paradigm shift in gin culture in India. In order to develop a liking for the drink, India needed its own voice in its gin story, crafted with a geo-specific flavour profile, bestowing its distinctive gout de terroir to the spirit. In recent years, new-age distillers in India have done just that by introducing a contemporary desi spin to the gin scene — brewing craft gins with indigenous botanicals such as Himalayan juniper and Gondhoraj lemons.
A triple-distilled neutral grain spirit, re-distilled in a traditional copper pot still, Jaisalmer Indian Craft Gin retains the classic flavour of juniper berries. Of the 11 handpicked botanicals, 7 have been sourced from all corners of India – from vetiver grown around the fields of Jaisalmer, lending its peppery notes, to the sweet orange peels of Central India complementing the citrus and floral tones of the gin and Darjeeling green tea leaves imparting an earthy, vegetal twist.
Greater Than Gin, India’s first craft gin from Nao Spirits, has been the Bronze Award winner in the International Wine and Spirit Competition in 2020 and 2021. The brand claims that the award-winning beverage with juniper and fresh lemon peel on the nose and a zing of ginger on the finish, is an improved version of the London Dry Gin, made in India.
Hapusa, the other offering from the stable of Nao Spirits, goes one step further. It is distilled with foraged Himalayan juniper sourced near the snow line in the Indian Himalayas. Hapusa is the Sanskrit name for juniper, and it lends its name—along with its wild flavour structure—to this gin, crafted entirely with homegrown botanicals such as turmeric from Tamil Nadu, Gondhoraj lemons from West Bengal and dried mango from Uttarakhand.
The singular focus of Third Eye Distillery is on their flagship spirit, Stranger & Sons gin. According to Sakshi Saigal, one of the three young founders of the Goa-based enterprise, the craft gin moves beyond the conventional juniper route and accentuates Indian botanicals and spices to bring up its unique aroma and taste. The bold move has paid rich dividends. Stranger & Sons has been the recipient of multiple international awards, including a Gold-outstanding medal at IWSC 2020, the first Indian gin to bag the coveted prize. It has also won gold at Gin Master 2021, from among 472 entries by 233 companies.
The silky-smooth textures and flavour profile of the luscious liquid is an interpretation of their go-local ethos, with a healthy hit of black pepper, nutmeg, mace, coriander seed, cassia and four different varieties of citrus peels. The entrepreneur trio painstakingly ensures that their tiny brand leaves minimum environmental impact. There’s no plastic on their packaging and botanicals are used whole, with no part discarded as waste.
“While most distilleries use a constant flow of cold water, which is later drained out, we decided to invest in a recycling tank that reduces our water requirement to 25 litres instead of over 10,000 litres of water [which might be traditionally required],” says Saigal.
The burgeoning cottage-scale gin business has thus carved a niche for itself in the liquor market. But it remains to be seen if the boom is sustainable, and the balance between catering to a growing demand and adhering to environment-friendly practices can be sustained in the long run. There are already growing concerns that Goa’s booming distilleries are adversely affecting the water table.
However, there has been a real resurgence of interest about locally brewed gins among Indian millennials. Gin parties at watering holes, where expert mixologists are customising the beverage with botanical infusions and exotic garnishes, are gaining popularity with the savvy, well-travelled consumer interested in craft cocktail culture. Gin Explorers Club, a gin festival curated by Food Talk India, recently organised a two-day Mumbai event after four editions in Delhi. The increase in turnout has been astounding – from an invited list of 50 guests in 2017 to over 15,000 in 2022.
Dr. Srinivas says that this boom, at least in part, is building on the age-old knowledge about gin’s medicinal properties. “[It is] important to understand gin’s medicinal origins and its filtering of knowledge and skill into the 21st century,” she said.
The Indian gin-aissance, in lockstep with the global trend, and free from a colonial hangover, is scripting this new narrative.
