Finally redeemed

Sebastian Morello on the delights of Gordon’s Morello Cherry Gin

As a rule, I do not review distilled spirits. Hitherto, I have mostly sought to keep away from them altogether. Distilled spirits are dangerous substances. We should take note of the fact that the distillation process was introduced to the West and its presence has played merry hell with Christian nations. There is much virtue and little danger in fermented libations, but in distilled tinctures the danger is acute. I have seen the most genteel of men turn savage under the influence of a few drams.

Nonetheless, it must be admitted that the monastic alchemists and herbalists of the high Middle Ages put this new knowledge to good use. Hooded masters of hidden lore took God’s benignity woven into His creation and concentrated it in fiery potions, restoring health to God’s faithful by way of His botanical gifts. Indeed, it is on account of this pharmaceutical heritage that distilled spirits gained their ancient name: aqua vitae, the ‘water of life’.

Only when that libidinous ogre Harry VIII smashed the monasteries of these sacred Isles did distillation leave the cloister and enter the tavern. Homeless monks wandered the land, selling their ethanol and the knowledge of its production, in the hope of making ends meet. But only after the Inglorious Usurpation of 1688 did the political use of distilled spirits occur to our overlords. In a desperate attempt to make the English forget Merry England, whose innocent playfulness and piety the Stuarts had sought to restore against the wishes of treasonous Puritans, William of Orange drugged the nation with gin.

Since the toppling of the Stuarts, gin has haunted our country. I recall, over two decades ago, admiring the signet ring of a school chum as we rested on the grass after a rugby game. On his signet was the profile of a boar’s head. “Don’t you recognise it?” he asked, “It’s on all our bottles”. His surname was Gordon. I took little notice, and only years later did I observe the same chivalric hog of my armigerous schoolfriend on a bottle of Gordon’s London Dry. Not until early adulthood did I learn of gin’s noxious, Protestant history, and only after I had acquired a liking for the stuff while replenishing myself with G&Ts on safari in deepest Africa.

At our camp on the Zambian side of the Zambezi River, near Victoria Falls, I remember my brother ordering a ‘Pink G&T’ (1 part gin, 2 parts tonic water, and a few drops of Angostura bitters). A gentleman was perched at the bar; he was dressed from head to toe in bush khaki, and under his wide-brimmed suede adventurer hat, his rosy face was straddled by an enormous Kitchener moustache. He registered his appreciation of my brother’s judicious cocktail order: “Excellent choice!” he exclaimed, “the quinine in the tonic will deal with any malaria, and the bitters will bestow upon your skin a scent that will keep the mozzies at bay in the first place”.

“And the gin? What’s that for?” asked my brother.

“That, my dear chap,” said the gentlemen, leaning in, as if telling a secret, “Is to make you blotto.”

You see, gin’s malignant purpose cannot be hidden for long. And yet, by some tendentious and highly dubious causal chain, we might argue that gin has finally been redeemed. For not only is gin a child of those distilled potions effected by the sacred art of medieval monks, but alone it has maintained a connection with the ancient monastic discipline of curative herbalism.

Gin derives its complex flavours from a host of botanicals, all at the service of the dominant juniper berry. Since severance from its monastic patrimony, gin has been redeemed by the creation of Gilbey’s Gin in the 19th century, by Sir Walter Gilbey, the uncle of the great Monsignor Alfred Gilbey. We are told that God brings good out of evil, and behold: out of a family of gin-makers the Church received one of its most loyal defenders of her holy Tradition. You may certainly raise a cold G&T to that!

By diluting a distilled spirit, one mitigates the peril. Following the invasion of William of Orange, the mournful English used to drink gin neat and - I kid you not - in pints. Fortunately, those days are over. Gin is best taken 1:4 or 1:3 with tonic water and a few ice cubes, either in a highball glass or, as has become trendy in recent times, in a Spanish balloon glass (which has been re-marketed as a “gin balloon”).

A G&T cocktail is, in my view, an instance of gin redeemed, salvaged from its injurious past. All that was needed to improve this classic colonial concoction was admixture with morello cherry. Well, you’re in luck, for Gordon’s has released a Morello Gin! Gin, we might say, has been liberated from Orange and salvaged by Cherry! And a Morello G&T is, it turns out, the perfect accompaniment to late summer evenings, as I have repeatedly confirmed over the past months. Enjoy!