These days, at certain times of the year and in certain greetings card shops, you may begin to notice a nifty little refrain dotted about the place: ‘you are the gin to my tonic.’ You will spot it on Valentine’s Day cards and wall plaques; on bumper stickers and key rings and chalk boards. It comes in red and pink hues, and in flowing script fonts accompanied by hearts. And you don’t need to be a mixologist or a professional matchmaker to divine the meaning. To be compared to one half of this humble mix –this happy union –is the highest praise we might give our nearest and dearest. You know a drink has made it when it’s begun to replace ‘I love you’ in the romance stakes.Not that this trend is all that surprising. Because the partnership of gin and tonic is a love affair of quite poetic proportions. Theirs is the greatest marriage of all –and it started in sickness as much as health. Gin, a spirit distilled with juniper, dates back at least 900 years, when it was usually taken as a medicine against ailments and disease. The earliest traces of the drink exist in Salerno, Italy, where Benedictine Monks (it’s often the monks, you’ll find) translated Chinese and Arabic recipes to distill aqua vitae –the water of life. Soon, the Italians added flavor, as Italians tend to, via roots and herbs and spices, before the congenial influence of the Dutch saw this ‘genever’ sashay out from the medicine cabinet forever –and over to the bar. Before you knew it, the English were in on the act, too, with the creation of their epoch-defining London Dry: the style of gin most recognized and sipped today.But it wasn’t until the 18th century that the spirit finally met its soulmate. By then, the European armies had discovered that malaria, rampant in the tropics, was striking down their men at an alarming rate. They turned to the ancient wisdom of the Americas, and the healing bark of the cinchona tree –a rare and delicate plant that thrived in the foothills of the High Andes and produced quinine, a preventative for the deadly disease. By 1865, the Briton Charles Ledger had smuggled cinchona seeds out of the Peruvian rainforest, The only problem, of course, was that quinine itself is incredibly bitter. In fact, the only way to get soldiers to drink it was to mix it with water, citrus and sugar. Adding their daily ration of gin didn’t hurt either, of course –and for many, it was love at first sip. Or as Winston Churchill wrote: ‘Gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire.’When we began making tonic at Fever-Tree, we wanted to restore this fantastic ingredient to its rightful place in our recipe. That’s why we spent our first 18 months delving into the history books discovering its origins and then set out to discover finest possible cinchona trees in the world –taking us to a set of plantations, spread like vineyards across the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, that were descended from the very same seeds Charles Ledger took from Peru centuries ago.Today, of course, the disease-proofing necessity of tonic has largely faded. But the love affair of gin and tonic has not. You don’t need a greetings card company to remind you that this humble drink is the pinnacle of romance and camaraderie –an exquisite combination, the perfect match, the ultimate coalition. You just need to sip what’s in your glass.
