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TIMELESS
FINNIES THE JEWELLER
KINGGTIN
WITH TWO NEW RELEASES A WEEK – JUST IN THE UK – GIN HAS BECOME THE POPULAR DRINK DU JOUR. BUT HOW DID IT REINVENT ITSELF AFTER THE DARK DAYS OF DECLINE THAT STARTED IN THE 1970S? FAR FROM BEING AN OVERNIGHT SUCCESS STORY, IT HAS INVOLVED A COMING TOGETHER OF SEVERAL KEY TRENDS. GERALDINE COATES TRACES THE ZIG-ZAG PATH WE’VE TAKEN TO ARRIVE AT THE GREAT GIN CRAZE, MARK 2
here’s no question that we are in the grip of a modern gin craze – and a very different one from the gin madness that swept the country in the 18th century when London and other big cities were awash with cheap and noxious spirit.
It’s astonishing, but very welcome. I published my first book on gin in 1997, and I often claim, not entirely jokingly, that the only people, back then, who were seriously interested in the juniper elixir were me and Desmond Payne, Beefeater’s hugely respected master distiller. We still have a cackle about how the gin world has changed.
Back then, one would walk into any high street off licence or supermarket and find a few dusty bottles: Gordon’s, certainly; Beefeater, possibly; and, if it was an upmarket sort of place, Bombay Sapphire. Now, online drinks retailers usually have over 300 gins on offer. That doesn’t include the many tiny brands sold in person the length and the breadth of the country. Then, gin was in a slow but steady decline, losing market share and, crucially, the youth market. But in 2017, sales of gin in the UK broke through the £1 billion barrier, whilst in the US, British gin’s biggest export market, sales have increased by 553% in the last decade. The number of gin distilleries in the UK is double what it was in 2010 and, as I write, another will surely be opening.
So what happened? How did gin, once the world’s most popular white spirit, reinvent itself after the dark days of steady decline that started in the 1970s? It’s certainly not been an overnight success story, and it has involved a coming together of several key trends.
First, and not to be underestimated, is the commercial savviness of Bombay Sapphire who basically recreated gin for a new generation with a less juniper-heavy spirit designed to lure younger drinkers away from vodka. Its success inspired others like Hendrick’s, whose floral taste profile attracted those who used to say “I don’t like gin”. Others have picked up the baton. New entrants to the market have been massively rewarded with ever-increasing sales and, in the
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