Gin Made Me Do It: 60 Beautifully Botanical Cocktails

By Jassy Davis and Ruby Taylor

Recipes for gin cocktails that go way beyond the G&T—plus advice on choosing the perfect bottles for your bar.

With origins dating back a millennium, when Benedictine monks started distilling juniper-scented spirits for medicinal purposes, gin is a passion for many—including blogger and cocktail maven Jassy Davis. In Gin Made Me Do It, Davis explains everything you need to know: how to choose the perfect bottle, mix the ultimate martini, and deliver delicious cocktails for every occasion.

With colorful illustrations and fascinating dashes of history, this book is a delight for any gin aficionado who wants to mix up the perfect gin and tonic—or something more adventurous like a Yuzu Sour, a Shooting Star, or a Salty Sea Dog.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781524854317

Jassy Davis

Jassy Davis is a cocktail gal. She's written six books dedicated to mixing drinks, including Gin Made Me Do It, Winter Warmers, Summer Sparklers, With Alcohol Anything Is Popsicle, Alcohol Not Included, and Glorious Boards. When she does put her cocktail shaker down, she enjoys developing recipes for brands that like their dishes to be cosy and comforting with a dash of fun. She lives by the sea in Brighton and you can find her on Instagram at @ginandcrumpets.

Book preview

cover.jpg

Gin Made Me Do It copyright © 2018 HarperCollinsPublishers. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.

Andrews McMeel Publishing

a division of Andrews McMeel Universal

1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106

www.andrewsmcmeel.com

ISBN: 978-1-5248-5431-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018957521

ATTENTION: SCHOOLS AND BUSINESSES

Andrews McMeel books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail the Andrews McMeel Publishing Special Sales Department: [e-mail].

CONTENTS

A Short and Scandalous History of Gin

Meet Madame Geneva

Infuse your Booze

The Perfect Martini

The Recipes

Index

Credits

A SHORT AND SCANDALOUS HISTORY OF GIN

It began with monks—11th-century Benedictine monks, to be specific. They lived in Salerno, in southern Italy, in a monastery surrounded by rolling hills and juniper trees. And they had a still. A swan-necked alembic still; the kind invented by Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan in Baghdad in the late 700s, and the kind you might find in your local gin distillery today. The monks used it to distill sharp, fiery, alcoholic tonics, one of which was distilled from wine infused with juniper berries. It wasn’t exactly gin—not as we know it—but it was the first recorded juniper-scented spirit.

The monks didn’t consider themselves early mixologists. They were making medicines, hence the juniper. As a medicinal herb, juniper had been an essential part of doctors’ kits for centuries: The Romans burned juniper branches for purification, and medieval plague doctors stuffed the beaks of their ghoulish masks with juniper to protect them from the Black Death. Across Europe, apothecaries handed out juniper tonic wines for coughs, colds, pains, strains, ruptures, and cramps. These were a popular cure-all. A little too popular, according to some, who thought people were keener to take their medicine than they should be.

THE RISE OF THE DISTILLERY

By the mid-16th century, alchemists had worked out how to distill spirits cheaply from grain. In Holland, good harvests filled the barns and burgeoning trade routes brought spices from South East Asia in incredible quantities. By adding those spices and plenty of locally grown juniper to cheap malt spirit, the Dutch created an inexpensive brew that grew and grew in popularity. They called it genever.

The Dutch took genever around the world, but it was Elizabeth I who accidentally brought it to England. She sent soldiers to help the Dutch fight for independence in 1585 and they returned with bottles of the aromatic drink. The English quickly developed a taste for it, and by 1621, London had over 200 distilleries busy making strong and hot waters for a thirsty public. When the Dutch Prince William of Orange landed in Devon in 1688 and marched to London to take the throne, genever’s place in English society was guaranteed.

In 1710, 2 million gallons of spirits were drunk in England and Wales. By 1743 it was over 8 million. Most of it was drunk in cities, and nowhere loved gin more than London, where 90% of all English spirits were distilled. Daniel Defoe, who had written a pamphlet in 1726 for the London Company of Distillers praising malt spirits, complained in 1728 that people were getting so drunk on a Sunday they cannot work for a day or two following. A gin-fueled crime wave spilled into the streets and courts. The newspapers were scandalized and the government was forced into action.

A series of Gin Acts passed between 1729 and 1738 raised duty on gin and the cost of a distilling license. Legal gin sales dropped, while juniper tonics made by surgeons became mysteriously more popular and the bootleggers were busier than ever. Informers ran protection rackets, mobs lynched suspected informers, and gin shops sold cheap hooch flavored with turpentine and sulfuric acid to the gin-crazed masses.

Finally, in 1743 a Gin Act was passed that made a difference. Under it, licenses were easier to buy and duty easier to collect. The government gave up on prohibition and the black market gave up on gin. Legal and perhaps even respectable, gin lost its cachet with the drinking classes.

It didn’t vanish entirely though, and in the early 19th century, a round of tax cuts slashed duty on spirits and whetted the public’s appetite for gin once more. Within a year the amount of gin drunk in the country had doubled, and gin drinkers had somewhere new to go to indulge in their favorite spirit: the gin palace. The opposite of a seedy gin shop, gin palaces were handsome buildings, clad in wood and glass, and shining with light. They were oases of warmth and conviviality amid the chilly Victorian nights.

COCKTAIL CULTURE

The quality of the gin itself was changing too. The 18th-century Old Tom gins had been made in alembic

Reviews for Gin Made Me Do It

[mstrust · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A very cool guide to the history of gin and its variations, alone with many gin or genever based cocktails, several originals. The fun text and illustrations done in the style of 1920's liquor and travel posters make for a very entertaining book. Here's a cocktail invented in Detroit a hundred years ago.