As seen here yesterday, Kerry Greene and I put together a trivia quiz all about gin last year. Here are the next few questions, along with my discussion of the answers. As before, I've obscured the answers by putting them in white text on a white background; just highlight the area between the brackets to see what's there, and click on smaller pictures to embiggen them.
4. The first half of the eighteenth century saw London in the grip of gin mania with profound effects on its society, memorialized by what moralistic artist and social commentator in his Gin Lane?
[William Hogarth]
With the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the accession of Dutchman William of Orange to the British throne, tensions with France meant that the government moved to restrict imports of French brandy and instead encouraged gin production. The “Gin Craze” of the first half of the eighteenth century saw an explosion in British consumption of gin, and the societal effects of overconsumption led to a backlash. (It’s where we get the terms “Mother’s Ruin” and “Strip-Me-Naked”...more on that anon.) The Gin Act of 1736 effectively taxed legal gin out of existence and the illegally distilled gin which took its place was much more likely to be adulterated or downright toxic. By 1743, per capita English gin consumption was a staggering 2.2 gallons a year.
In 1750 in the St. Giles neighborhood of central London, over a quarter of all residences were gin shops, and other crime flourished. Enter popular moralist [Hogarth], who issued two cheap and popular prints, Gin Lane and Beer Street, in 1751, “calculated to reform some reigning Vices peculiar to the lower Class of People.”
As the BBC put it:
Gin Lane thrusts us into the abyss of the slum of St Giles north of Covent Garden, where alcoholic mothers pour gin into the mouths of their offspring. The central figure, a crazed, half-naked prostitute with syphilitic sores on her legs, is oblivious of her baby tumbling to its death.
Elsewhere, destitute gin drinkers are reduced to a brutal, feral existence. A carpenter and a housewife wearing ragged clothes desperately pawn their tools and pots and pans in order to fund their habit. Behind the parapet a boy competes with a dog to gnaw on a bone. The cadaverous ballad-singer slumped in the foreground is in a woeful state of ill health. His black dog symbolises despair.
Meanwhile, in the background, actual corpses are visible – including the hanged barber in the upper storey of a partially ruined house. In this section we are confronted by a frenzied crowd of drunkards, cavorting and causing havoc: one lunatic clutching a pair of bellows to his head even dances a jig while waving a spike upon which a baby has been impaled – a figment from a nightmare. This is a gin-fuelled, topsy-turvy world of mob rule, precipitating the breakdown of society in general – symbolised by the collapsing building at the far end of the miserable vista.
Beer Street, by contrast, is the heaven to Gin Lane’s hell. Set in Westminster, where trades and crafts are seen to thrive, rather than St Giles where the poverty-stricken residents are feckless and unemployed, it features healthy, well-fed labourers at leisure, enjoying large, frothing tankards of the national brew. A newspaper on the table reports a speech by the king recommending “the Advancement of Our Commerce and cultivating the Arts of Peace”. Nearby, fishwives with overflowing baskets suggest that a society based on solid, honest mercantile values – untainted by that foreign spirit, gin – will be rewarded with abundance and prosperity.
About a month after [Hogarth] released these prints, this response poem was published in a newspaper, amplifying his message. This is your brain on gin...any questions?
5. One classic style of gin is often sweeter, more viscous, and less botanical in flavor than most of the dry gins that currently dominate the market. It was especially popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, and one account says that it was sold incognito under the sign of a black cat during the "Gin Craze" of the 18th century. What is the name of this style of gin?
[Old Tom]
Lots of spirits history is kind of fuzzy and sketchy, because by definition everyone who was writing things down had been drinking. Imbibe magazine did a good recap, though:
As with many lost liquors, the history behind [Old Tom] is a patchwork of partial facts, incomplete information, and the kind of yarns that provoke cocked eyebrows. Most of the tales involve a black cat—the [tom] in question. Hayman’s reports that back in 1736, one Captain Dudley Bradstreet lucked into both a piece of London property and a stock of gin. Bradstreet hung a sign depicting a painted cat in the window and let it be known that doses of sweet mother’s ruin could be had at the address. “Under the cat’s paw sign was a slot and a lead pipe, which was attached to a funnel inside the house,” reads a history put together by Hayman’s. “Customers placed their money in the slot and duly received their gin. Bradstreet’s idea was soon copied all over London. People would stand outside houses, call ‘puss’ and when the voice within said ‘mew,’ they would know that they could buy bootleg gin inside. Very soon [Old Tom] became an affectionate nickname for gin.”
6. Hendrick's Gin has either one of the most unique tastes or one of the best marketing teams around. (Maybe it's both.) Name the two botanical ingredients, added as essences after distillation, that differentiate Hendrick's taste and are its claim to fame.
[rose, cucumber]
This article from Gin Foundry provides some good insight into the Hendrick’s production process -- interesting that they make two very different spirits in two different kinds of stills, then blend them and add the flavor essences before dilution and bottling. The Gin Is In has these detailed tasting notes and cocktail recommendations.
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