A hearty toast to Tanqueray

Gin doesn’t seem very fashionable these days, but it was the most popular spirit in the West during the “golden age of cocktails” in the 1920s and well into America’s Prohibition era. The British certainly fancied their gin too in times gone by, and one of them, Angus Winchester, is fond of recounting how gin almost went extinct – and how it’s lately been revived.
“Gin was quite popular from about 1860 to 1919 and almost half of all cocktails were gin-based,” Tanqueray gin’s global ambassador told The Nation on a recent visit to Bangkok. Winchester was recognised as the “Best International Brand Ambassador” at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards two years ago.
“But gin is very easy to make badly,” he admitted. “You take neutral alcohol, add juniper oil and stir it around, and that would taste like gin, but it’s obviously not very good gin. When the Prohibition came, the quality of gin declined significantly in America and bartenders began creating cocktails to cover up the bootleg gin rather than highlighting the good gin as usual. By 1933 people had been drinking bad gin for 14 years and they didn’t trust it quite so much anymore.
“Secondly gin has a lot more competition these days. There’s rum, Irish and Canadian whisky, tequila and even vodka. Thirdly, Prohibition drove a lot of gin brands out of business – there were only eight left.”
One of them, of course, is Tanqueray. Based on Charles Tanqueray’s 180-year-old recipe, London Dry Gin is widely acknowledged as the industry benchmark. A blend of the purest triple-distilled spirit and four handpicked botanicals, London Dry is said to have been Frank Sinatra’s preferred gin. Its sophistication – and its edge – have long made it a favourite with the stars of fashion, film and music.
Another obstacle to gin’s comeback, Winchester pointed out, has been the fact that young people didn’t want to drink “what Mum and Dad used it to drink”.
“That didn’t start to change until Bombay Sapphire came along in 1987, with a lighter flavour, not too scary for vodka drinkers, something your mother probably never drank. That was the kick-start to a lot more innovation. In the last five years, 500 new gin brands have appeared – and 45 new tonic waters. This is the perfect time to be drinking gin because there are a lot of great gins out there, and bartenders are getting better at using gin, too.”
Another label Mum and Dad wouldn’t have heard of is Tanqueray No Ten (Number 10), regarded as the category-buster for gin. It’s loosely referred to as “new western-style gin”, with the focus shifting slightly away from juniper to spotlight other flora. No Ten has the four base botanicals – juniper, coriander, angelica and liquorice – as well as white grapefruit, lime, orange and camomile, which together yield a unique, full-bodied character with citrus undertones.
No Ten is renowned for its versatility, and is in fine form in classic stirred drinks such as the Martini and Negroni as well as in fruit-forward cocktails such as the Southside and the Clover Club.
“A lot of people think good cocktails are the ones where you can’t taste the alcohol,” Winchester said. “That is so intuitively wrong. Gin is truly versatile. If you say you hate gin, give me half an hour and I’ll find a gin cocktail you like. Whatever your favourite cocktail is, if you replace the base spirit with Tanqueray No Ten, it always works – if not as well, then better.”
No Ten, he explained, is the first “great gin” that isn’t “juniper-forward”. “Now you could almost have juniper standing next to citrus or camomile – sort of sharing the stage a bit more.”
Winchester has commanded the Tanqueray soapbox for seven years. Asked what keeps him there, he replied, “I like good drinks and I want to help people to drink better. I particularly like gin because it’s always been a sophisticated spirit.
“Gin is also seen as the hardest spirit to make, firstly because it doesn’t use raw materials you can find around you – like grains, grapes, agave or rice. You have to be connected to the entire world. Gin is harder to make also because it’s like cooking an entire meal in one pot. You have all the herbal ingredients in the pot at the same time, for the same amount of time. Extracting the exact flavours you want from them is incredibly difficult. If you mess up a gin, you can’t stick it back in the barrel or blend it with something else. You throw it away and start again.”
That would be a bummer, but then gin is widely perceived as a bit of a downer. It’s good company when you’re feeling forlorn – unlike cheery vodka, for example.
“I’ve heard that many times, that different spirits do different things to you,” Winchester smiled. “There’s a psychosomatic element to it. Alcohol in general is a depressant, of course: it makes your heart beat more slowly, and that’s why, if you drink too much, it will kill you. But there is nothing in gin that would make you feel miserable!”