The Book of Gin: A Spirited History from Alchemists' Stills and Colonial Outposts to Gin Palaces, Bathtub Gin, and Artisanal Cocktails

by Richard Barnett

Gin is not (like absinthe) the drink of velvet-trousered aesthetes, nor is it (like port) the toast of respectable merchants and scholars, nor (like ale) the refreshment of peasants in the meadows of “Merry England.” It is urban, and it possesses—or has been said to possess—all the vices and virtues of urban life.

it was the ninth-century physician Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī, “Rhazes,” who collected and codified the secrets of wine-distillation. Rhazes became fascinated with the properties of this volatile, ephemeral liquid, and gave it an Arabic name—al-koh’l.

In Arabic, al-koh’l signified both a psychoactive substance and a djinn, prefiguring the double meaning of “spirit” in English.