Tonic Water – a little history

Gin and tonic is simply the quintessential summer drink. But this simple sounding summer cocktail is beguiled with history and its distinctive ingredient quinine is more than a simple mixer; it has saved thousands of lives, changed the course of wars, and is recognized world wide as a cocktail staple.

What makes tonic water so special is quinine, which really is a wonder drug. It is known to cure malaria, assist with digestion, treat nocturnal leg cramps, and remedy intestinal parasites and protozoa. Quinine comes from the cinchona tree, which is native to South America. There are about forty species of cinchona that range from small evergreen shrubs to 15-foot high trees. Legend has it that the name cinchona comes from the Countess of Chinchon, who was the wife of a Peruvian viceroy in the 17th century. She was sick with an awful fever and was medicated with the bark from the cinchona tree in 1638. Two years later, she brought it to attention to Spanish explorers, who took the bark back to Europe. Even though the tree had no name at this time, it quickly flooded the European market as a cure all for malaria, fever, indigestion, mouth and throat diseases, and cancer. For close to 100 years quinine was being used as a pharmaceutical but it wasn’t until 1737 that botanists identified the tree and named it cinchona after the Countess of Chinchon.

In 1825, the British East India Company stationed in India started mixing their bitter quinine tonic with gin to make it more palatable. The gin and tonic was born! Soon a British company patented their tonic water recipe and around 100 years later, Schweppes started selling tonic water in the U.S.

Until 1820, the only way anyone knew how to utilize the quinine was to dry and pulverize the entire bark into a fine powder and steep it in water. But in 1820, two scientists, Pelletier and Caventou, isolated the chemical quinine from the bark and figured out how to extract quinine alkaloid from the wood without any byproduct. Demand for the refined quinine grew and South American rainforests prospered from the harvesting of the cinchona bark. But in the mid-19th century, British and Dutch explorers smuggled seeds out of Latin America and planted cinchona trees in Java, India, and Ceylon in hopes of taking a hold in the market. None of these trees fared well and they didn’t produce a high-grade quinine alkaloid in their bark. But the Dutch wouldn’t give up and they tried again by smuggling thousands of seeds out of Bolivia which they planted in Java. These trees fared much better and provided exactly what the Dutch were hoping for, cinchona trees with a high-grade potent quinine. The Dutch quickly monopolized the production of quinine and by 1918 they had total control of the entire world’s supply. As Bolivia and Peru were no longer players in the international quinine market, they both saw a serious collapse in their economies.

World War II stopped the Dutch in their tracks as the Japanese occupied Java in the 1940’s and the Dutch, being with the Allied Forces, couldn’t get to their crops. South America’s cinchona trees were once again in demand, but the Dutch wanted to maintain total control and didn’t want to share what they believed was their wealth with Peru and Bolivia so they planted new plantations in their African colonies. During this time, there was a dire shortage of quinine as the world’s largest plantations were in Java and the plantations in Africa needed time to mature and produce. Under severe pressure to produce enough quinine for a very demanding market, American and European pharmaceutical companies figured out how to make a synthetic version of quinine, which proved to be highly lucrative. However, synthetic quinine had its faults, as it did not contain quinidine, which is used for heart arrhythmia and it wasn’t as effective in fighting malaria.

The good thing is, in our climate you don’t have to drink tonic water to stave off a tropical disease. Which is fantastic as Schweppes has very little quinine in it, just enough to make it glow under a black light. If you were trying to fight malaria symptoms with modern day tonic water, you would have to drink the equivalent of ten gin and tonics a day. A lot of people think that tonic water doesn’t have any calories or sugar, but tonic water is just like any other soda and has a heap of sugar in it just like a Coke or a Sprite.

If you want to try your hand at making your own tonic water, it is quite simple as long as you have some quinine lying around (if not, you can purchase it online from Rain Tree Nutrition.

Handcrafted Tonic Water

1 cup sugar

2 cups water

1 sliced grapefruit (with rind)

1 tablespoon allspice berries

1 tablespoon juniper berries

1 tablespoon quinine powder

Bring your mixture to a boil, stirring the entire time it’s on the heat, and strain out the solids. Let cool.  Use one part tonic concentrate to three parts water.  Add a little gin  and enjoy the healthful benefits of an age-old tradition on a hot summer day.

Tagged as: British East India Company and the gin and tonic, cinchona, history of the gin and tonic, history of tonic water, quinine, quinine powder, quinine water, Schweppes tonic, tonic water