Gin genius; Studying gin may seem like nice job if you can get it, but there's a serious side to its science, as Alastair Gilmour discovers.

WE drink it in cocktails such as martini and white lady or we down it with tonic, ice and a twist of lemon. But gin's complex composition belies its short, sharp name.

One man - purely in the name of science - has been analysing its flavour compounds and its aromas while researching its history so we can understand the very essence of the spirit. Then, armed with the knowledge, we can ultimately enjoy it better.

Noel Jackson, head of education at the Centre For Life in Newcastle, has sniffed, swirled, nosed, tasted, checked, examined, studied and pondered a whole range of gins for an exploration of the science behind the brands in an effort to discover which are genuinely different and which are just advertising hype. It's in line with the Centre For Life's mission to inspire curiosity in science through imaginative events, to raise standards in science education and to support world-class research.

His findings are to be presented at The Botany of Gin at the NewcastleGateshead EAT! Festival's Food Heroes Tasting Market at Newcastle Civic Centre on Friday May 15.

Noel says: "Not long after I came to the Centre For Life we realised that while we were doing a lot for various sectors of the population, we weren't doing a great deal for young adults. We thought 'what are they interested in' and decided music and drinking - sex and drugs and rock and roll, if you like.

"It would be difficult to do something with them about sex - and rock and roll is well catered for - but alcohol is the drug of choice for many, so we started thinking about what people are interested in and how to get them talking about science. What we do is put science in an intellectual context which is satisfying and a pleasurable aesthetic experience.

There's nothing more pleasurable than eating and drinking.

"I'm in the wonderful position where I can explore my own passions and share them with people - and because they're pretty basic passions they strike a resonance. Gin has a very distinctive flavour which some people either like or don't. Smells and flavours are very closely connected and have a very strong ability to stimulate the memory. If you have had a bad experience with gin you're going to be reminded of it every time you drink it. It's what Marcel Proust wrote in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu when the flavour of a madeleine biscuit takes him back to his childhood." Gin more than likely started life in the 11th Century as a juniper-flavoured medicinal potion made by Benedictine monks in Salerno in Italy. Other remedies used spirits distilled from wine with herbs, spices, berries and roots added. Juniper was already prized as a cure for various kidney and bladder disorders, arthritis and gout. Later, juniper took on almost magical properties as it was believed to guard against the Black Death, the bubonic plague that spread across Europe in the Middle Ages.

Juniper flavoured spirit made the leap from medicine to social drink in the Low Countries in the late 15th Century. Called genever, it was an unsophisticated spirit but one that combined well with juniper and other spices.

English mercenaries took to drinking it as a morale-booster before battle - dubbing it Dutch courage - and the survivors brought it home with them.

"It takes quite a long time to do a proper study," says Noel. "You can't just sit down and say 'right I'm going to do half-a-dozen gins now'. If you've got six drinks there's an awful lot you have to do and obviously your facility for critical analysis decreases the more glasses you have. You need to have a long-term plan. I shuffle them around, do them blind, comparing each pair critically.

"You have to test A against B, then A against C and A against D. Then it becomes harder, testing B against C, B against D and so on.

Because I did all these side- by- side comparisons I'm pretty sure about the things that are different and the things that are not. It would be very easy to trivialise the research and we should take these things very seriously. I think as a scientist with a curiosity; does it really make a difference what I buy? W e actually started off looking at vodka but there's no point in buying anything other than cheap vodka. There are two sorts, basically made from potatoes or made from grain. It's basically a solution of ethanol, so if you want flavour what on earth are you drinking vodka for? With expensive vodka all you're doing is lining the pockets of the manufacturers.

"Gin is a very, very different study; I wouldn't recommend drinking cheap gins at all. They're made by a different process which usually involves adding essential oils to grain spirit - basically vodka. The standard brands, Booths, Gordon's and Beefeater are what we call London gins. Even those made in Warrington are London gins, but there's only one that doesn't fall into that category - Plymouth gin. It's designed to be less bitter. Most of the ordinary brands have pretty similar formulas involving juniper, citrus peel and a few minor ingredients like orris root. There's not a lot to chose between them.

"Beefeater is the number one brand in the US and Gordon's is the number one brand in the UK, but pour them over ice with tonic water and I'd suggest most people would have a hard job telling which one they were tasting.

You'd have to have a very, very sensitive palate to be able do that, at least in isolation.

But given the two together you could probably tell.

"If you want to sit down and have a gin and tonic you'd be better off with a London gin with its big citrus kick. If you want to make cocktails, something like an Alexander, you'd want a softer gin so Plymouth is better.

"At The Botany of Gin event, we'll be giving people the chance to discover the difference between London gin and Plymouth gin and talk about its history." Gin arrived in England and society changed dramatically in 1688 with the accession to the throne of William of Orange who replaced the Catholic King James II in one of the most pivotal moments in social and cultural history.

Significantly, William and his retinue brought with them the custom of drinking genever as a health tonic that doubled as an enjoyable intoxicant.

The first laws William passed placed restrictions on the import of French wines and brandies, then subsequent lowering of taxes that made spirits production cheaper than beer meant the drinking habits of a nation altered virtually overnight. Whisky in those days had rarely travelled beyond its Scottish and Irish boundaries but almost everyone could afford to make - and drink - gin. It was fashionable, it was a sig showed a willingness t But the consequence ticularly in London. By 18th Century, vast qua were being consumed illustrated by William Lane engraving showe behaviour and by 174 risen to the point wh gn of patriotism and it to embrace the new.

es were disastrous, pary the beginning of the antities of cheap gin . Warnings of its evils Hogarth's famous Gin ed drunken disorderly 43, consumption had here on average pro- portionally every man, woman and child in London was drinking more than a litre of gin a week. In 1751, 9,000 children died of alcohol poisoning in the capital alone.

New legislation in 1751, however, began to effectively control sale and production of cheap gin and paved the way for respectable companies to start producing quality spirit.

Alexander Gordon, Charles Tanqueray, James Burrough and Sir Felix Booth were pillars of society and had the influence to ensure their gin became a premium product.

The new tax meant a licence to distill gin rose to pounds 50, which was enough in those days to buy a decent house," says Desmond Payne master distiller at Beefeater in London. "The gin distillers who forked out so much had to improve what they were doing simply to be better than the others - better quality, better image, better marketing. James Burrough was a former pharmacist who developed Beefeater. He went around Covent Garden selecting all the ingredients." Those ingredients include angelica root and angelica seed from Belgium which have dry and earthy characteristics, much like certain hops in beer. Coriander seed adds spicy citrus notes; liquorice forms a bittersweet, woody quality; almonds leave marzipan and soft spice behind, while lemon and orange peel appear to hold the combined characters together. The other ingredient in Beefeater

gin is orris root - from the iris plant - which adds flavours of Parma violets.

"It's not how many ingredients you use, it's about the balance of oils," says Desmond. "I was talking to a perfume designer in New York and mentioned orris root. He said 'do you use that in gin? We use it in Chanel No5'." Botanicals, the single most important element in making gin, supply the fingerprint for each brand and ensure that every big name gin is different.

"You could use 120 different herbs, spices and aromatics," says Hugh Williams at Gordon's.

"Most people, however, use no more than ten. Only 12 people know the Gordon's recipe and even if you did know it you couldn't replicate the gin." All brands use juniper and coriander but Gordon's also uses ginger, cassia and nutmeg; Plymouth's seven botanicals include sweet orange and cardamom, while Bombay Sapphire uses cassia bark and grains of paradise (which Noel Jackson dismisses as "only black pepper"). The aim is to produce a balanced, complex aroma - which doesn't necessarily mean the more botanicals the more complex the smell. As any cook knows, flavours can end up cancelling each other out.

"We have a little mantra at the Centre For

Life," says Noel Jackson. "Hands On, Minds On, Hearts On. For something to be successful we know it's better that people actually do it rather than just be told about it. Something that has some sort of intellectual content is better than something that's just an experience and something that engages the brain is great.

I've recently been asked to develop 'dinners with a difference' and have been working with our chef not only on the food but at fine dining and exploring the science in it. We had a Darwin Dinner earlier this year while looking at species diversity. It's something that we can do here that other centres would find very difficult.

"Hands On is about what people care about - and there's little that people care more about than a nice dinner when they're hungry. Gin and tonic stimulates the digestive juices so it's a good thing to have before a meal.

"Education should be fun - and fun should be educational." .. Noel Jackson from the Centre For Life presents The Botany of Gin at the Newcastle Gateshead EAT! Festival's Food Heroes Tasting Market at Newcastle Civic Centre and Northumberland Street on Friday May 15, 7.15-8.15pm (price pounds 15). Tastings throughout..We have a the Centre On, Minds On, He a little mantra at e For Life. Hands arts On

CAPTION(S):

IN YOUR GIN The botanicals in Beefeater gin. Clockwise from bottom left, Seville orange peel, ground liquorice, coriander seeds, Sicilian lemon peel, angelica seeds, ground almond, juniper berries, ground orris root and angelica root. DRUG OF CHOICE Noel Jackson says alcohol is the drug of choice for many so he uses it as a topic to get people into science.