Enter Dan Jones, bestselling gin author and cocktail enthusiast, who will make you love this tasty drink even more. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

At that time, the Brits and the Dutch were both Protestant countries fighting against the Catholics. Most people are more familiar with wheat or even grape-based spirits, which have been popularised through the big vodkas in France. When you read his whisky books, you are transfixed and taken aback by the poetry and the understanding. The brilliantly botanical spirit is much more than tonic’s sidekick, it’s sophisticatedly sippable, and adds depth and flavour to any drink. The book starts off with a summary of the history of gin and some of the botanicals that go into it.But certainly when William of Orange came to the UK and popularised jenever and started increasing domestic consumption and production of alcohol and—in our case—gin, that ‘Dutch courage’ came to be associated with gin. As she explains very well in the book, even in the first couple of years, people just didn’t know how to deal with it. The city of Oxford has been a popular location for fictional murders for nearly a century, the ancient university and its beautiful buildings also lending themselves to wonderful screen adaptations. You’d drink it before battle and it would either numb the pain of what was about to happen or it would numb the senses to the fear of going to what was, essentially, certain death at that point.

You’ve got to remember that back then—and even before then, we’re talking about the 12th and 13th centuries—juniper had this ridiculous, medicinal, all-curing, all-conquering folklore about it.Ou seja, apenas 1/5 do livro realmente é sobre gins e mesmo assim não tem nada que um vídeo mais ou menos de YouTube não apresente. He’s doing the tasting notes of the tonic water by themselves but there’s an implied pairing that’s a lot more general. It was about policing what the poor drank so that the gentry weren’t affected by it and keeping that debauchery away from the upper class. He goes: ‘this is what I think about the taste but here’s a load more information so that you can understand the human aspect of the distillery, the production, the provenance.

In ‘Beer Street’ there’s prosperous industry and everyone’s getting along, the streets are clean and everyone is looking a bit portly and well-fed. From a police procedural set in World War II Berlin to a man pushing his in-laws off a wall in Ningbo, the variety of settings for crime fiction continue to provide a lot of opportunities for armchair travel. com at the colonial gin and tonic—it’s in the cocktail section—there are photos of the daily dramming on the left hand side where these troops in the 1900s were getting their rations every morning. It truly is a global history, focusing on the development of gin styles from sweet and malty to dry and crisp, along with relevant period illustrations giving the reader a broad sense of just how important gin has been in the world of spirits.The big four or five gins that you can think of—Gordon’s, Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire etc—are still eighty percent of the market. If you think of all the all other cocktails you can make—Martinis, Negronis, Tom Collins—or even sipping it neat, the fact that almost 70 per cent of people are only ever drinking this in a gin and tonic, it’s a huge part of the equation. Delicious cocktails include classics like the Negroni and Martini, to cocktails to suit sipping occasions such as the Earl Grey Sour for a nightcap, or new takes like a take on the Espresso Martini, but instead of course, using gin. If you've purchased a gift box, we will send it to the address you provide so you can wrap it up and give it to them.