The world's first quinine gin?

Despite the plethora of gin-based cocktails out there, I’m sure that most of the world’s gin gets guzzled in combination with tonic water. This combination stems from the days of the Raj, when British Army officers and East India Company employees were issued with quinine to ward off malaria, and found its intense bitterness could be mollified by mixing it with gin, water, sugar and lime. They developed a taste for the drink, and modern tonic water contains the quinine, water, sugar and citrus elements.

Although various attempts have been made to produce quinine syrups or concentrates, it’s surprising that (given the bloom of exotic gins on the market) no has tried putting quinine in gin itself, until now: 1897 Quinine Gin from Maverick Drinks uses cinchona bark, the source of natural quinine, as a botanical.

The other botanicals are juniper, coriander, angelica, orange, lemon, nutmeg, cassia, cinnamon, orris and liquorice—which are macerated and traditionally distilled in a copper pot still—plus pink and white grapefruit peel and lemon peel which are cold-distilled separately with the cinchona. In this latter process, instead of using heat to boil off the alcohol, a vacuum pump is used to reduce the pressure inside the vessel to the point where the alcohol evaporates. Adherents feel that by not “cooking” your botanicals you extract a different, and more natural, flavour from them. Oxley gin uses vacuum distillation and has a similar emphasis on fresh citrus. When you reduce the pressure to the point of evaporation, the temperature naturally drops—in the case of Oxley it drops to -5 degrees Celsius. Sacred Gin also uses vacuum distillation, but distiller Ian Hart uses a warm water bath to keep it at room temperature. Whereas Oxley macerates all the botanicals together and distils in one shot, Sacred botanicals are all macerated and distilled separately then blended (Ian does this so that different botanicals can be macerated for different lengths of time). So 1897 Quinine Gin is a hybrid: clearly the producers felt that the benefits of cold distillation (in this case at room temperature) were felt with the citrus, but not with the other botanicals. (I gather that cold distilling juniper gives a much gentler, grassier flavour than the sharp pine resin character we are used to.) It is bottled at 45.8% ABV.

The number in the gin’s name is the year in which Sir Ronald Ross discovered the parasite in mosquitoes that causes malaria, paving the way to an effective treatment.* The day of his discovery, 20th August, is apparently World Mosquito Day. Of course the fever-fighting properties of quinine had been known for a long time before that,** but Ross’s discovery in theory meant that insecticides could be used to curb the spread of the disease. In fact mosquitoes have proved good an evolving resistance to these, and even today a child dies every minute from malaria. Consequently, half the profits from sales of this gin (at least £5 per bottle—enough to buy, deliver and install a mosquito net) are donated to the charity Malaria No More UK.

Note the intriguing embossed background pattern. No explanation is offered

The gin comes in a handsome rectangular bottle that combines weighty opulence with a rough-hewn, artisanal quality. The cap is dipped in black wax and the  labels are black and silver. The front label, which is elaborately embossed (including a background pattern that I at first took for the veins of a leaf but which turned out, on closer inspection, to be a geometric design that to me suggests African textiles or decorative woven baskets) features a stylised cinchona tree. The border features lines from Ross’s poem.*

So what does quinine in a gin taste like? Not so easy to say: we seldom encounter it on its own, and most of us just know it as being bitter. Yet, as Ian Hart once showed me, it is easy enough to distil out the bitter elements from a bitter ingredients (he gave me macerations of hops and gentian to taste—very bitter—and then distillations of the same macerations—not bitter at all). I’ve got a bottle of the Battersea Quinine Cordial, an experimental quinine syrup made by Hendrick’s a few years ago: it has a sort of heady, dusty, woody, aromatic smell to it, like some vermouths or cocktail bitters, and a rubbery floral element on the tongue—plus a pronounced bitter finish. (But I should point out that this product also contains orange flower, lavender and holy thistle as well as cinchona bark.) Maverick describe the bark as adding an “ethereal flavour and floral aroma” to their gin.

A GT Turbo made with 1897 Quinine Gin and Battersea Quinine Cordial

Sniffing the bottle of Quinine Gin I’m hit first by orange and grapefruit, then spices—cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg—and sandalwood, plus something floral and a hint of chocolate. In a glass you get a delicate and distinctly sweet balance of juniper with juicy orange, something leafy and a parma-violet floral weight. You expect it to be sweet and heavy on the tongue but it fact it is dry with a slightly bitter finish. It has poise in the way it subtly balances juicy, fruity citrus, woody spice with a dry chocolate finish, and heavy floral elements. The sinus-clearing resinous character of juniper is definitely there, but this is not a juniper-led gin. Citrus is what dominates.

I try it in a few obvious cocktails. It makes a lush, perfumed Martini, and this is a great way to appreciate the gin. It also works well in an Aviation, with its citrus and floral elements sitting perfectly happily with the violet and lemon ingredients. I expected that it would get rather lost in a Negroni, but in fact the fruity/floral character shines through, balancing nicely with the bitterness of the Campari to produce a mellow, thoughtful version of the drink.

Ironically, one drink that I did not think worked so well was a gin and tonic. It will vary depending on what tonic you use (perhaps the clean, blank canvas of 1724 might be more forgiving), but with Schweppes I found that the lack of juniper thrust made the gin get a bit lost. Better to appreciate this gin in a Martini, and it would probably make a good Gin Old Fashioned too.

On the subject of which, since I’ve got the Battersea Quinine Cordial out, I can’t resist trying a GT Turbo. I think this may have been invented at Purl, but it combines gin with tonic syrup and some lime juice to make a short drink that is meant to be a sort of compressed G&T. The end result will depend on the syrup you use (and there is no standard here), but with 50ml of Quinine Gin, 20ml Battersea Cordial and 20ml lime juice you get something that is indeed oddly like a condensed G&T, with a sharp, cleansing bitterness that fans of Campari will appreciate. The fruitiness of the gin is a good foil to the woody dryness of the tonic syrup. On paper we’re in the same ballpark as the Corpse Reviver No.2—short, sweet and sour, citrus and a bit herbal (particularly if you use a quinated amaro like Cocchi Americano or China Martini)—but this is altogether leaner and with a nettle-y asceticism, more about the bitter high notes.

1897 Quinine Gin is available online from Mast of Malt and Amazon at about £40 for 70cl.


*He was so chuffed that it prompted him to write a poem: 

This day relenting God
Hath placed within my hand
A wondrous thing; and God
Be praised. At His command,

Seeking his secret deeds
With tears and toiling breath,
I find thy cunning seeds,
O million-murdering Death.

I know this little thing
A myriad men will save.
O Death, where is thy sting?
Thy victory, O grave?

The last two lines are from Corinthians 15:55. I suspect few boffins write poetry when they have a major breakthrough these days; they probably tweet about it instead. Not sure which is better.

** It was in use to fight malaria in Rome in 1631. The South American nations where cinchona grew naturally tried to band the export of seeds but eventually they were smuggled out. By the time of Ross’s discovery quinine production was at its peak in the Dutch colony of Java, fuelling the colonialist tendencies of the West. The Second World War cut the British off from the supply, leading them to develop synthetic alternatives. Since 2006 quinine has no longer been recommended by the World Health Organisation as a first-line treatment for malaria.

Introducing the Sloppy Giuseppe cocktail

In our ceaseless quest for interesting corners of the Prohibition world around which to theme Candlelight Club parties, we have twice taken advantage of Cuba’s romantic and exotic place in booze history. When alcohol was banned in the States, it didn’t take long for Americans to notice that Cuba was jolly close indeed and was untouched by the Volstead Act. Before long Havana became one big party, filled with neon-signed jazz clubs and cocktail bars. Bacardi teamed up with Pan Am to lay on boat plane flights from Key West right into Havana Harbour so no drinking time could be lost, inviting holidayers to come and "bathe in Bacardi rum". "I have seen people leaving incoming ships," commented US Consul Hurst, "who have stopped at bars on their way to the hotel… By the time they reached the hotel they could scarcely ask the reception clerk for a room."

Rum was the national drink, thanks to a climate ideal for growing sugar cane, and some of the best-loved rum cocktails came out of this era. The Mojito (rum, fresh mint, lime juice, sugar and usually a splash of soda) derived from an ancient drink originally made on the island from a pre-rum sugar alcohol. The Daiquiri (rum, lime juice, sugar) is said to have been developed by American mining engineers in 1898 fed up with drinking Planter’s Punch, who named it after the village where they were stationed. The Cuba Libre (rum, lime juice, cola) is named after the battle cry of the rebels fighting to escape Spanish rule—although this conflict ended in 1898 and Coca Cola did not reach the island till 1900.

The reopened Sloppy Joe's today

There was also a drink named El Presidente which was apparently very popular both in Cuba and back in the US (illicitly during Prohibition and legally afterwards). Named after President Mario Garcia Menocal, it consists of equal parts Bacardi rum and French (i.e. dry white) vermouth, plus a bar spoon of grenadine. Perhaps it was inevitable that someone would try to create a “Cuban Martini”, a sophisticated drink for classy clientele. So I was keen to try it out as a possible drink for the menu at our event. The only problem was that it isn’t very nice: I made myself one as an experiment and it was thin and astringent. Adding more grenadine didn’t help either, just created a clash of flavours.

Fans of Cuban cocktail history will no doubt have been pleased to hear that Sloppy Joe’s, one of the most popular Havana bars from the era, reopened in March after some 57 years. (I’d like to take this opportunity to plug a 1933 Warner Bros movie called Havana Widows, starring Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell, which I discovered in my researches; it’s full of outrageous wise-cracking dialogue and features a drunk lawyer who can usually be found in a bar called Sloppy Moe’s, which goes to show how famous Sloppy Joe’s was in its day.) In a news item on the subject, Imbibe included a recipe for a Sloppy Joe’s Cocktail,* which combined rum and French vermouth with dashes of grenadine and curaçao, plus lime juice. Most Cuban cocktails seem to come back to lime juice, and there’s no denying that the union of rum, lime and sugar in a Daiquiri is a perfect thing. I made myself a Sloppy Joe’s Cocktail and it does hold together—you can taste all the elements, the underlying rum, the fruitiness from the grenadine and curacao, and their sweetness balancing the sour element of the lime, plus a gentle bitterness rising up from the vermouth. But Mrs H was unmoved by it, and I can’t see myself making one very often. It’s one of those recipes where you feel the grenadine and curacao have been stapled on in an attempt to fix an underlying problem.

A Sloppy Joe cocktail

However, when I first attempted to make one of these cocktails I looked in the fridge and realized that I didn’t actually have any dry white vermouth (Noilly Prat is my normal choice). What I did have was a bottle of China Martini, a strongly flavoured vermouth with, as its name suggests, a strong dose of quinine. Derived from the bark of the South American quina tree (China Calissaia), quinine was used by locals to combat fever and it came to international recognition when it saved the life of the wife of the Spanish Viceroy in Peru in 1638. It became a staple part of life in the Raj where, made into “tonic water”, it was soon found to go well with gin. As with many alcoholic infusions and distillations, what started out as a way of preserving something with medicinal qualities was soon being consumed for purely aesthetic reasons. Likewise the pleasing bitterness of quinine is a key part in the flavour of quinated wines like China Martini,** and there is a long Italian tradition of making such infusions. Likewise, the word “vermouth” derives from the German Wermut, which is wormwood—for this bitter herb, famously a defining ingredient in absinthe, is also to be found in vermouth.

Back in the day there was a French vermouth-style drink called Kina Lillet, which appeared in famous cocktails from the Corpse Reviver No.2 to Ian Fleming’s Vesper Martini, which James Bond creates in 1953’s Casino Royale. This drink was discontinued in 1986, and the manufacturers today produce Lillet Blanc, a sweet, orange-flavoured wine-based blend, which is rather pleasant but with a delicate flavour that is easily swamped in a cocktail, in my opinion. I’ve never been able to taste Kina Lillet but it is generally considered to have been more bitter,*** more along the lines of Italian products like China Martini and Cocchi Americano. (For some reason I had got the idea that some of these were developed recently to fill the gap left by Kina Lillet, but in fact Cocchi Americano has been in production since 1891. It’s hard to find out much about China Martini, and Martini’s own website doesn’t mention it, but it also clearly has a heritage, as this bizarre TV advert, from 1958, attests.)

A Sloppy Giuseppe cocktail

So I tried knocking up a cocktail using China Martini, rum and lime juice. China Martini is pretty sweet so I left out the grenadine and curacao. And it is something of a revelation. Essentially it is a Daiquiri that uses the vermouth for sweetness rather than sugar, with the added herbal notes and piquant bitterness too. Unlike the Sloppy Joe it is pleasingly simple, with just the three ingredients, and is resilient when it comes to proportions: it works with one shot of each, though I think it’s best with the rum increased to 1½ or 2 shots, depending on how strong you want the sweet and sour elements. Perhaps the only downside is that China Martini is not an attractive colour and the resulting cocktail is a sludge brown.

Sloppy Giuseppe
1½–2 shots rum
1 shot China Martini
1 shot lime juice

Shake ingredients together with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. If you prefer it sweeter, you could reduce the amount of lime juice, or perhaps add a dash of grenadine.

It also works with Cocchi Americano, though not as well: Cocchi Americano always seems to me to have quite a ginger flavour to it which sits comfortably with things like whisky, but I’m not so convinced here. I can also confirm that the recipe works well with Americano Gancia (less so with Martini Rosato, which is not sweet enough) and it would presumably work with a number of the many bitter-sweet vermouths out there.

By chance I stumbled across an article that David Wondrich wrote about the El Presidente. Like me he was never won over by it and couldn’t see why it had been so popular—until he noticed that a number of the early Cuban recipes specified “Vermouth de Chambery”. He writes that Dolin is the only remaining Chambery style vermouth and that, in addition to dry white and sweet red, they also make a semi-dry blanc (as indeed producers such as Martini and Cinzano make a pale but sweeter bianco). As soon as he tried the cocktail using that, the whole thing came together.

Which is similar to my own experiences with the Sloppy Joe—or Sloppy Giuseppe, as I have christened my new version (with apologies to Pizza Express who have a meaty pizza bearing the same name).

China Martini is available from the Whiskey Exchange priced at £23.25. Which is a lot for a vermouth, I know.

* I have the 2008 reprint of the Sloppy Joe's Cocktails Manual from 1931, and the only cocktail in it named Sloppy Joe's actually contains cognac. pineapple juice, port, grenadine and curaçao. The recipe described in Imbibe appears as an American President cocktail, while the El Presidente recipe, with the addition of curaçao, is actually called a Cuban President.

** See also Cocchi's wonderful Barolo Chinato which I mentioned before as a good accompaniment to chocolate.

*** I’m sure I’ve read a claim from the manufacturers that Lillet Blanc is little different from Kina Lillet, insisting, oddly, that the latter actually had less quinine in it, though don’t bother looking at their website today as it has been a just a holding page for some time. I’ve seen two quotes from Lillet at the time saying that the new version is “fresher, fruitier and less bitter”, but the only link I’ve found in relation takes you to Lillet’s French site which seems to be dead. 

Tonic for the troops

The guinea pigs prepare for the blind tasting

Although I often find myself sampling gins neat, I seldom actually drink gin that way for pleasure. Part of gin’s recent surge in popularity is precisely its versatility as a cocktail ingredient, but let us not forget the humble gin and tonic, which is how I suspect a lot of people almost always drink their gin. (It was for just this “silent majority” that SW4 gin was created.)

Mr Bridgman-Smith tests gins exhaustively in about 16 different ways: I’m not sure my tastebuds or my liver have the stamina, but you certainly can’t get the measure of a gin without trying a G&T. Yet it has always niggled with me that if you’re really comparing different products this way then you surely can’t ignore what probably makes up at least two thirds of your drink—the tonic.

DBS explains his elaborate scoring system. He is roundly ignored

It’s not surprising that we’ve seen a rise in the range of tonics out there too, with recent arrivals Q and 6 O’Clock joining Fever Tree and Fentimans which have been around a few years, and venerable brands such as Schweppes and Britvic. A couple of months ago we had a spontaneous tasting at one of our regular ginthusiast nights at Graphic, but DBS was determined to formalise the process and so, last Monday, we returned to blind-taste eight tonic waters.

Just as gin started life as a way of both making crap spirit taste better with a juniper infusion and as a way of preserving the medicinal benefits of juniper, so tonic water began in the days of the Raj as a way of making the daily anti-malarial quinine dose more palatable by diluting it with water and adding sugar. Inevitably someone realised it was even more palatable with gin in it.

My scoring grid, before I cover it in tonic-spattered
tasting notes that ignore the categories of bitterness.
sweetness and effervescent DBS has carefully laid out

Quinine itself came originally from South America. In 1638 Countess Chinchona, wife of the Spanish Viceroy in Peru, was cured of a fever by a local healer using bark from the native quina tree; this popularised the substance across Europe, where it cured Charles II and Louis XIV, and the tree acquired the botanical name Cinchona Officinalis after the countess. However, the bark seems to have been in use in Rome (surrounded by malarial swamps in those days) at least as early as 1631, having been brought back by Jesuits (in fact it was known as “Jesuit’s bark”). The active ingredient quinine took its name from the native word for the tree, though “cinchona” turns up in the names of fortified wines like Kina Lillet and China Martini, which both contain extracts. Peru and the other countries where it grew outlawed the export of trees and seeds, and the bark became rare and precious, but eventually seeds were smuggled out to Indonesia and the tree became widely cultivated in Asia and the West Indies.

Mind you, modern tonic waters have much less quinine (but apparently still enough to make them fluoresce under UV lighting—there’s something you can try at home), although tonic is still recommended for treating nocturnal cramps. In fact anyone genuinely wanting to take therapeutic quinine might be interested in a concentrated tonic syrup that DBS and I were given to try by Louis Xavier Victor-Smith of Hendrick’s. It’s called Battersea Quinine Cordial though I don’t think it has actually had a commercial release yet. I thought it was yummy.

The quinine cordial they don't
want you to have

However, the Battersea Quinine Cordial was not among the tonics we tasted on Monday, although we had been sent a phial of John’s Tonic Syrup all the way from Arizona—it comes as a concentrate and you add soda water.

We initially tasted the tonics neat and DBS asked us to rank them in order of preference. Although the blindness of the tasting was laudable, owing to a shortage of glassware we had to taste the samples one at a time, which meant you somehow had to remember the flavours of all of them to make a comparison. DBS, ever the instinctive taxonomist, does like to know which of any group of samples is your “favourite”, but I often don’t have one—I’m just interested in the differences. Here are my tasting notes, in the order we tasted—bearing in mind that at the time I did not know what I was tasting in each case:

Tesco own brand Lime on the nose and palate. A bit one-dimensional. Quite sweet, lacking in bitterness. Not very effervescent.

Schweppes More fizz, more dominant bitterness, less citrus than the last one. Not much happening in the aroma department.

Britvic Very effervescent, giving an interesting mouthfeel. Balanced citrus notes. Nose is more complex than previous two.

John's Tonic Syrup, handmade at the Tuck Shop
restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona

John’s Tonic Syrup This one is frankly brown, which is a bit of a giveaway (although, as we didn’t even know which tonics were on test, I guessed it was David’s own homemade tonic syrup, which is pretty terrifying). This one was unexpectedly savoury and vegetal, with an extraordinary spicy, herbal nose and earthy root flavours. Plenty of bitterness—perhaps too much for drinking on its own. Leaves a disturbing tide mark of interesting scum around the glass. Overall, quite intriguing, but a bit outside the comfort zone if tonic water is what you're after.

Fever Tree Good mouthfeel from the balanced effervescence. Plenty of citrus on the nose, although unfortunately it reminds me of some cleaning product. Good level of bitterness, though a shade too much for drinking on its own. Good balance of lemon and lime, though the taste seems a bit crude.

Schweppes Slimline Big citrus nose—though not backed up on the palate, which is pretty empty. A slightly austere mouthfeel. Overall a bit watery, which at least makes it easy enough to drink on its own.

Fentimans Rather an overwhelming nose of citrus. Big exotic flavours, including lemongrass, are a giveaway: although we weren’t trying to identify the brands, Fentimans is pretty distinctive.

6 O’Clock Very bold! Nose does have a hint of varnish but on the palate it is rather tasty.

Obliged to rank them, I put Schweppes and Britvic joint first, 6 O’Clock third, Tesco fourth, Fever Tree fifth, Fentiman’s sixth, Schweppes Slimline seventh and poor John’s tonic last. In truth I was only certain about the last three, and even then I think Fentiman’s is actually quite nice but too overwhelming as a mixer. Likewise the brown syrup is fascinating but not what I look for in a tonic water. (Or perhaps it just takes a bit of getting used to?)

The winners, by popular vote

As a group, our overall rankings put Schweppes first, Britvic and Schweppes Slimline joint second, Fever Tree and Fentimans joint fourth, Tesco and 6 O’Clock joint sixth and John’s syrup limping in lasting place. Apparently these are pretty standard results for this sort of blind test, and in fact mirror a home tasting that DBS held, where Britvic came out a surprise winner.

I don’t drink tonic water on its own, so I had no real yardstick to compare against; but I do drink G&T, and we now had a chance to taste the top three (plus 6 O’Clock, for curiosity’s sake I guess) with gin (Bombay Sapphire in this case). I added Fever Tree too, because it is what I usually drink at home. The results were a bit different:

Britvic Dominated by citrus and sweetness—too sweet for my tastes.

Schweppes Less sweet than Britvic and more citric than Fever Tree. Has a sort of neutrality about it; arguably a benchmark taste for what a tonic “should” taste like.

Fever Tree Compared to the others this is all about mid-range notes for me, warm and almost spicy (Fever Tree don’t say what goes into it but do mention “botanical oils”), compared to the high citric notes that dominate some others. It’s probably worth experimenting with matching different gins and different tonic waters.

6 O’Clock Rather nice, though I kept getting an odd hint of mustard (I was alone in this observation). This tonic was actually created to match with 6 O’Clock gin, a combination I’d be keen to try.

Schweppes Slimline Doesn’t taste much of anything.

The lesson? Well, if you’ve always used the same tonic you might well be surprised by the differences if you shop around. Mind you, if your default tonic is Schweppes then this test at least shows that you can rest assured life is not passing you by.