The actual origin story of the G&T

Shall we bust one last gin myth? The gin and tonic was not invented in India as an anti-malarial. British troops did not drink it as part of their rations. And, honestly, no one in the history of tonic water ever drank is as an anti-malarial. That was made up by a sloppy writer sometime around the 1970s, and has been echoed ever since.

The cinchona tree is native to South America. According to a 1712 German book, Dissertatio Solennis Medica de Quinquina Europaeorum, the first Europeans to encounter cinchona – and more importantly to encounter natives using it to treat malarial symptoms such as fever and nausea – were Spanish jesuit priests in occupied Peru.

This claim is further detailed in an 1817 French paper, Zuma or La Découverte du Quinquina. The Spanish began importing cinchona bark to Europe, and soon its use was widespread, primarily for treating fevers and dyspepsia.

In 1820, French scientists Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Caventou successfully isolated and extracted a sulphate of quinine (which they also named), using alcohol and sulphuric acid. By 1824, quinine lozenges were available – with no mention of treating malaria.

Tonic or quinine wine emerged the same year, and though treating fevers was mentioned at the end of the ad, malaria wasn’t mentioned.

Read more in A Most Noble Water by Jared Brown & Dr Anistatia Miller

It has been claimed that the Dutch mixed genever and tonic by 1825. This is likely a misunderstanding from published references to Schiedam Schnapps tonic, which was simply a ’tonic’ or health-restoring liquid in the pre-tonic water sense of the word.

Over the next three decades, quinine continued to be prescribed by doctors and sold directly to the European public primarily to treat digestive ailments for the simple reason that the majority of Europeans were unlikely to encounter a malaria-bearing mosquito in the lifetimes, but were prone to near-constant food poisoning.

Meanwhile, in India, the majority of the British troops were actually recruited locally, and their preferred intoxicants included bhang, charas, ganja, opium, toddy, and arrack*. Thus, they were an unlikely group to suddenly mix gin, lime sugar, sparkling water and quinine.

The earliest known ad for tonic water appeared on 24 July 1858, promoting Pitt’s Aerated Quinine Tonic Water, and predicting that this would replace the brandy and soda doctors recommended as a daily drink. Prior to this ad, even months prior, tonic water meant nothing more than health-giving liquid.

There were ads for tonic waters for the hair, a land ad touting a stream of tic water flowing through the property, etc. It was only after Pitt’s and other quinine tonic waters emerged that the term took on its modern meaning. But for Pitt’s, sales foundered in London and within four years, Pitt’s was pursuing sales far from England in the British colonies. Ads appeared in newspapers in Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and India.

Around 1873, stories appeared in London newspapers of people arriving from India and seeking to quench their thirst with gin and tonics. And thus, the gin and tonic was born.

* ^{Christopher Cavin, ‘Intoxicants and the Indian Colonial Army: Consumption and Control, 1857-1919’ (unpublished thesis, University of Strathclyde, 2018).}

A Most Noble Water: Revisiting the Origins of English Gin

A Most Noble Water presents an entirely new history of gin. Researched and written by award-winning drinks historians Jared Brown and Anistatia Miller, it shatters the whole notion of a Dutch origin and revisits English gin’s German antecedents and definitively English origins. A Most Noble Water is the first book to present in detail the recipes that led up to the development of modern-day gin and includes them verbatim. And it is heavily footnoted, so every reader can argue with the authors-or not.

Read more in A Most Noble Water by Jared Brown & Dr Anistatia Miller

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