Why gin is cool and how London buses helped

The River Test flows through the new home of Bombay Sapphire gin at Laverstoke Mill, in the Hampshire countryside between London and the south coast of England.

It's among the country's purest chalk streams. You can watch the fish swimming in the crystal water and smell the fresh, cool air. The sound is of birdsong. It's as if the distillery -- old red brick and modern glass -- is in harmony with nature.

Shame things weren't always like that with gin.

The Oxford English dictionary wasn't alone when it described it as "an infamous liquor" in 1714. Gin was uniquely vilified when it became the drink of choice for the poor in 18th century London, destroying lives, families and communities.

It was the crack cocaine of the age and there was no shortage of dealers. The amount Londoners drank quadrupled between 1720 and 1730 and almost doubled again in the 1730's, according to "Gin Glorious Gin," a new book by Olivia Williams. The artist William Hogarth depicted the horrors in his 1751 print "Gin Lane," with its scenes of horror and debauchery.

Prostitution and violence accompanied the gin craze, which was seen as a threat to the social fabric. The drink became known as Mother's Ruin, a name that also relates to the fact it was used in attempts to induce miscarriages. Eight acts of Parliament were passed between 1729 and 1751 in attempts to undo the damage, Williams says. And after corner gin stores -- insalubrious neighborhood joints dispensing cheap liquor -- were forced out of business, gin palaces sprung up.

Back In Fashion

These bore some resemblance to modern fast-food joints: They were smart and clean with consistency of product and service. And lingering wasn't encouraged. These ornate bars made their money by serving a lot of customers quickly without making them too comfortable.

Demand for gin finally eased over the decades, to the point where it was considered unfashionable by the time I was growing up in the 1960s. My first taste was during an impromptu party as a teenager when my parents were away. My friends and I swigged the Gordon's from its green bottle.

I have rarely been so sick.

So what's with the current gin craze, where bartenders push crafted cocktails made with the stuff? I tried ordering a vodka cocktail at Sushisamba and the barman said, "We don't really like vodka." Gin is a much safer bet to be cool. The curiously named Worship Street Whistling Shop in Shoreditch specializes in it. Here, their signature Black Cat Martini uses a cream-infused gin as its base. (In 18th-century London, an illicit distillery -- called a whistling stop -- had a wooden sign of a cat on the door, according to Williams. Customers put coins in the cat's mouth and whispered the word "puss" and got a "mew" in return. They could then lift the paw and gin was dispensed via a hidden pipe.)

Drink Factory

In recent years the spirit has taken over at even more cocktail bars across London. Tony Conigliaro, who serves innovative cocktails at 69 Colebrooke Row, is among the bartenders who have helped make gin fashionable again. He founded the Drink Factory in 2005 (in Pink Floyd's former recording studio) to promote creativity and also won International Bartender of the Year in 2009.

That was the year after the award was won by Nick Strangeway, another hero of the U.K. cocktail business. He co- founded Strange Hill Ltd., a creative agency working with drinks brands such as Beefeater Gin and he helped create the drinks served at the restaurants of chef Mark Hix. These include the Pegu Club: Barrel-aged Plymouth Navy Strength gin with orange curacao, lime juice, Angostura and Bitter Truth orange bitters. This is a drink that started life in a British officers' club in Rangoon, now known as Yangon.

Key Botanicals

The flavour of gin comes from the so-called botanicals that are added to grain neutral spirit, or GNS. At Bombay Sapphire, there are eight core botanicals -- juniper, lemon, coriander, orris root, almonds, cassia bark, licorice, and angelica -- along with grains of paradise (a relative of ginger) and cubeb berries (from the pepper family).

At the new distillery, a re-purposed 300-year-old paper mill, the botanicals are displayed in dramatic curving glass domes created by Thomas Heatherwick, designer of the Olympic Cauldron that was lighted during the opening ceremony at the London 2012 Games. Heatherwick is also the creative brains behind the new Routemaster red double-decker bus, a modern interpretation of a British icon.

The vapour-distillation process for the gin produces excess heat that might otherwise be wasted. Here, the challenge was to pipe it into the two glasshouses -- one tropical, the other Mediterranean -- to help produce the required climates. Almost 900 Individually shaped panes of glass and 1.25 kilometers (0.78 mile) of bronze-finished stainless-steel frames make up the asymmetrical structures, Heatherwick Studio says. The ribbed greenhouses swell and taper like an armadillo, warm plant smells rising up through the air. It's Hotel California without the drugs. (Oh, and yes, you can leave.)

'Crystal Clear, Vibrant Drink'

Bombay Sapphire (a brand of Bacardi Ltd.) is known for its citrusy, floral style. The man behind all this -- albeit working from a 1761 recipe -- is Nik Fordham, the master distiller. He's passionate about gin and bristles when I mention its poor historic reputation.

"Within England and London, it has had a chequered past but a lot of it wasn't the gin we see today," Fordham says as he shows me Henry and Victoria, two of the four stills on site. (It's normal for gin stills to be given names.)

"I see gin today as a beautiful, crystal clear, vibrant drink that is so flexible to mix within many cocktails such as a martini or a G&T or a Negroni. It's that level of flexibility that brightens the star which is the gin category," he says.

The Laverstoke Mill distillery opened to the public last month, hewn from the shell of a former corn mill that had been leased in 1719 by a Huguenot called Henry Portal to make paper for bank notes. (Hence, the name Henry for one of the stills.) Visitors can smell the individual botanicals and mark a card with the plants whose scents they enjoy. This creates a flavor profile that is used to crafts a cocktail for them to try at the end of the visit -- mine was a citrusy Tom Collins. And yes, it was delicious.

A New Batch

"Gin has had a very peaky-trough kind of existence: It's back and forward in fashion," says Sam Galsworthy, co-founder of Sipsmith, which distills gin in an old garage in suburban Chiswick, west London. "Vodka came in through the '80s and '90s and gin was pretty uncool, a pretty dour spirit."

Sipsmith's range includes VJOP (Very Junipery Over Proof) and Sloe Jin. The company won Best U.K. Newcomer in the Observer Food Monthly Awards 2010.

Sipsmith is one of several small distilleries that has sprung up in London in recent years -- after an incredible lull. When the company sought a licence to distil gin in the city five years ago, it was the first such application since 1823.

It may have taken 90-odd years, but the drink that was once the ugly face of London life has undergone a rebirth. Gin is kicking.

The Bombay Sapphire Distillery is located about an hour's train outside Central London. "Gin Glorious Gin," by Olivia Williams, is published by Headline in the U.K. ($24, 14.99 pounds).