Common myth has it that the cocktail is a wholly American gift to the world of high spirits. But let’s hold that glass between bar and lips for a moment or two. Vermouth. Gin. Vodka. Surely European inventions. We might concede that the Americans came up with the idea of adding the ice but as for its being the fount of all things cocktail we might need to think again. Maybe think back as far as early 18th-century Britain.
During the 1690s Britain was blessed with good harvests and mountains of surplus grain. With prices careering south, King William III decreed that taxes should be cut on the distillation of grain in order to make good use of the bounty. Soon hundreds of thousands of gallons of neutral grain spirit was coursing through the nation.
The initial selling point of all those peddling all this hard liquor was its benefits to the drinker’s health. And they had a point. Although the exact science was still to be laid bare, there was an understanding that poor quality drinking water contributed to the outbreaks of such fatal conditions as typhoid, cholera and dysentery. The antidote was to consume alcohol instead: sterilised and pathogen-free. And now here was a market awash not just with beers and ciders but the real tough stuff.
You can read the full article in the Winter 2015 edition of CuiZine.
