Plymouth Gin - Historical Background

Historical Background

Blackfriars Distillery Blackfriars Distillery (Devon)

Gin, originally being a relatively cheap alcoholic beverage, was bought by the poor and caused considerable social problems, illustrated and satirised by the engraving 'Gin Lane' by Hogarth in 1751. The global deployment of the British Royal Navy led to the renown and wide consumption of the product. In British India, it was mixed with the tonic water consumed for the anti-malarial properties of quinine, which lead to the creation of the Gin and Tonic.

Plymouth Gin was very popular in the first part of the 20th century. 23 gin based cocktail recipes in the Savoy book of cocktails name Plymouth Gin specifically. It was a tradition in the Royal Navy that all newly commissioned vessels receive a "Plymouth Gin Commissioning kit", a wooden box containing two bottles of navy strength Plymouth gin and glassware.


Read more about this topic:  Plymouth Gin

Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or background:

    This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)