HOW WAS GIN RESCUED FROM OBLIVION AND CAME BACK WITH A BOMB(AY)
FROM 1760 TILL 1989 NOTHING MUCH HAPPENED WITH GIN APPART FROM MAYBE SMALLER LOGOS
Once upon a time in the 80s gin was something your grandmother use to drink and people order G&Ts just in a club or disco to get wasted.
Once upon a time in the 80s gin was something your grandmother use to drink and people order G&Ts just in a club or disco to get wasted. In that time when you ordered a G&T ,what you got was normally a really cheap dry Gin in a tube glass no bigger that a Kölsch glass. The bartender then poured around 5/6 cl of that cheap poison in the glass full with ice. Then he topped it with a equally cheap Tonic Water. You ended with an almost 1:1 G&T (the same amount of Gin and Tonic Water) Today some people like to drink their Gin in that way, but again today the quality of the Gin and also of the Tonic Water is far far better. Going back to the 80s: As you keep drinking your disgusting Longdrink normally you added some Tonic Water and somehow it would become drinkable.
We came a long way since that dark chapter of the Gin History, probably really close to the Gin Craze in relation with the quality of the Gin you where getting. In that time just a handful of labels that are mostly still around where still producing a good London Dry.
When the 90s arrived something change, a miracle in the form of a blue bottle. One of the most creatives marketing campaigns of all times and Boomb! Bombay Saphire was there, everyone wanted to have a drink from that strange blue bottle. A couple of years later the second pioneer added a black bottle to the mix , and something else... a piece of vegetable in your glass (yes, we are used to it today, but at that time a slice of cucumber in a glass was something never seen) and we hit the modern era in our Gin History. Hendricks created the first truly New Western, two ingredients never before used in a brand Gin : Cucumber and Roses. That did the trick, everyone wanted a piece of cucumber in their glass. Suddenly Juniper wasn't holy anymore. That gave Gin the liberty of transform himself, to explore all kinds of combinations.
With the new acquired freedom came the renewed popularity, the hype factor and the audacity of the new Gin distilleries. But something was still missing. The product was getting better, but the other factors in the mix where staying behind. Slowly premium Tonics started to flow the market, matching the excellent Gin with and excellent mixer. But one thing was still to solve: The tube glass wasn't enough.
It was in Spain, a country with sunny weather and long summers, where the Copa Glass or Ballon Glass appeared. For a Gin Drinker is equal to the wheel invention. In a Copa Glass you can mix the exact proportions from the beginning till the end. And thats not all, in Spain they took really seriously to reinvent the way a G&T should be prepared. They started adding all kinds of herbs, fruits, vegetables and spices to add even more flavours. The advantage of the Copa Glass is that it also looked amazing with all the new garnishes. Preparing something that used to be simple and plain became and art. And at The Bär we believe that an Spanish Style Gin & Tonic is the best way of enjoy such a versatile and noble drink.