Joanne Howdle: Could this be the origin of gin and tonic?
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Beautiful Botanicals by Joanne Howdle
Cinchona is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae containing at least 23 species of shrubs and small trees, all of which are native to the tropical Andean forests of western South America.
However, during the 19th century, several species of cinchona were introduced into cultivation in the same areas of British India and Dutch Indonesia by the English and Dutch East India Company, respectively, which led to the formation of hybrids.
The genus has evergreen foliage and can grow to between five and 15 metres high. Cinchona leaves are opposite, rounded to lanceolate, and are 10-40 centimetres long. The flowers of the botanical are pink, red and white and a key characteristic of the genus is that the flowers have marginally hairy corolla lobes.
The bark of the trees in the cinchona genus has historically been highly sought after for its medicinal value as it yields quinine and other alkaloids, which were once the only effective treatments against malaria and the reason that trees in the genus are also known as "Fever Trees".
For 300 years, until it was replaced by synthetic anti-malarials, cinchona bark provided the only effective treatment for malaria known to the west – this made it extremely valuable both economically and politically to Europeans in expanding their access to and exploitation of resources in distant colonies and at home.
Scholars have estimated that the British Empire incurred direct losses of £52 to £62 million a year due to malaria sickness, therefore it was of immense importance to secure access to a supply of the only known cure. However, gathering cinchona bark was often environmentally destructive, destroying huge expanses of trees for their bark.
In 1854, on an expedition on the Niger, Scottish physician William Balfour Baikie (August 1825 – December 1864) used quinine to successfully prevent malaria, rather than as an after-treatment. Before this, the death rate of Europeans on West African expeditions was extraordinarily high, often due to a particularly fatal form of malaria, and Baikie’s actions had repercussions across the world.
Quinine, and the cinchona tree, now became a vital tool for the control and expansion of empires.
But how did cinchona come to be associated with gin and tonic? Though quinine was occasionally paired with fizzy water, it was only in 1858 that it was patented under the name "Tonic Water" by Erasmus Bond, owner of Pitt & Co., in Islington.
It was marketed as a digestive and general tonic rather than a fever medication and did not immediately become popular. However, tonic water did better in hotter climes, and by 1863 adverts for quinine tonic waters appeared across British colonies advertised as digestives and as probably ineffective fever remedies.
It was most often recommended to help European travellers acclimatise to the tropical heat. The first known reference to a tonic water cocktail came in 1863 in Hong Kong, where it was paired with ginger brandy.
Many origin myths for gin and tonic exist, but none have been verified in the historical record prior to 1868. Quinine was most often administered as a medicine in alcohol, rather than as part of a cocktail.
Quinine could be mixed with gin, rum or wine, or with locally available spirits. The first known record of gin and tonic comes from the Oriental Sporting Magazine in 1868 where the participants were given the refreshing drink to combat the heat at the end of a horse race in Lucknow, India.
Therefore, the notion that the G&T was drunk in the tropics as an anti-malarial seems to be a 20th-century urban legend.
- Joanne Howdle is interpretation and engagement manager at the multi-award-winning Dunnet Bay Distillers Ltd.
