One thing that is a big deal in Barcelona is gin and tonic, or G&T as it is usually called in Britain. But unlike in Britain (and the US, for that matter), it is always served in a big goblet like that to the left. It is not just a few bars, and it is not just tourists (they are drinking all the sangria). I would estimate that any bar that isn't specializing in wine has about half the people drinking beer at the tables outside, and the other half drinking gin and tonic.

The places that go to the next level might have a dozen different kinds of gin and half-a-dozen different kinds of tonic. Fever-Tree seems to be a favorite, and Schweppes, which is actually the original tonic water going back a couple of centuries. The Royal Bliss in the picture at the start of this post sounds very British—but actually, it's made by the Coca-Cola company. When I lived in Britain, tonic pretty much meant Schweppes. In France, in fact, it is so standard that the French word for gin and tonic is "Gin-Schweppes". But Schweppes is owned by Pepsi these days.

The menu below, from the bar just along from the hotel where the Cadence team stays during MWC, has a selection of gins, and each is accompanied with different garnish (twist, lime, cucumber etc). But it only seems to have Schweppes and not another tonic, so not really in the game by Barcelona standards.

Tonic Water

Tonic was invented by the British expats living in colonial India. They had to take daily quinine as an anti-malarial drug. Quinine is very bitter, and so to make it more palatable it was taken with sugar, and carbonated water. Schweppes started to sell tonic water in 1871 (although Schweppes says 1783, that was when the company was founded and not when they created tonic water). At some point, adding gin to the drink became customary. It would be drunk before dinner as an aperitif. Tonic water today still contains quinine, but in much smaller quantities than are required for any medicinal effect—today it is just flavoring.

The first time I went to India I learned that there was a rule from that era that you didn't drink after dinner. I was at a party hosted by the uncle of my colleague from VLSI in the US, who I was traveling with. It seemed odd that nobody was eating, everyone was drinking (neat Scotch mostly, not gin and tonic). Eventually, at around 11 pm, people started to eat. It took time for us to get our food since there were several dozen people there. The first people to eat were already thanking my colleague's uncle and leaving before he and I had even made it to the front of the line. He told me:

It's your people's fault. When Britain first came to India, there was a lot of alcoholism. So the rule became that you only drank alcohol before dinner, never after. As a result, dinner got later and later, especially if it was a special occasion. When the British left, the Indians carried on the tradition and so at a party, food gets served very late and then the party is over.

My father was a naval officer from the age of 16 until his retirement. His timing was actually perfect. Born in 1928, he finished his training when he was 17 in 1945, just as the war ended. He managed to go his entire career without ever being involved in any real wars. Gin and tonic is very much a naval drink. In fact, when I was a teenager and there would occasionally be parties at our house with lots of navy people there, we would just make up jugs of gin and tonic (the alternative being brandy and ginger-ale, known as horse's neck). If you wanted to be difficult, you could ask for something else, but most people took a G&T. At the start of the evening, we made them strong, and by the end, they were mostly tonic. The tonic flavor is so strong it is hard to detect how much gin is in there, and despite the long menus in Barcelona, it seems rather a waste to put premium gin in a G&T.

Hendrick's Gin

Talking of premium gin, did you know Hendrick's gin is distilled in Glasgow, Scotland. I was surprised when I discovered that, since I'd never run across it in the years I lived in Scotland doing my Ph.D. and for a time afterward. It turns out that the reason is that it was only created in 1999, just 20 years ago, long after I'd left Britain.

The real genius behind such super-premium spirits was Sidney Frank, who invented Grey Goose vodka in 1996 for the American marketplace. It was so successful that Bacardi bought his company less than 10 years later for $2.2B. Since then several other super-premium spirits have been created, such as Patrón tequila (also sold to Bacardi...for $5.1B). Hendrick's gin was created by William Grant, who had also innovated a century before when the company created Glenfiddich in 1887. That was the first single malt whiskey to be marketed, as opposed to blended whiskeys like Johnnie Walker or Chivas Regal, which are actually 70% neutral grain spirit aka vodka.

Since Hendrick's gin uses cucumber in the distillation process, it is traditionally served with a cucumber garnish, rather than lemon, in a martini or a G&T.

Here's a fun trivia fact too. Do you spell it whisky or whiskey? It depends on where it is from. If the country has an "e" in it, then its whisk(e)y does too. Ireland: whiskey. Scotland: whisky. Canada: whisky. Japan: whisky. United States: whiskey (with the exception of Maker's Mark which has no "e"). Whisk(e)y is actually an anglicization of the Gaelic uisge-beatha meaning water of life.

Schweppes

I mentioned Schweppes tonic water. I actually worked for them. Well, sort of. I worked in a chocolate factory for Cadbury (see my post Jobs: Printer, Baker, Chocolatier, Caver) but in that era, it was actually Cadbury-Schweppes. Their advertising in the sixties traded off the popularity of the James Bond books (and later movies). Their ads never said the word Schweppes, and you never got to see more than the first few letters on the label. It was always "Sch...tonic water by you know who".

I think that companies give up successful advertising approaches too easily since everyone on the account wants to do something new. But not always. Avis kept "We Try Harder" for over 50 years. BMW has been the ultimate driving machine since the 1970s. I was talking to a woman in a slow-moving line for coffee once, who turned out to be a marketing person at Ross. So I sang that "I got it at Ross" jingle. She said, "we haven't used that for over ten years." I pointed out that if I still remembered it 10 years later, and I'm not even the real target demographic, then they should bring it back. I noticed recently that they have. I wonder if I had anything to do with it.

Talking of advertising brilliance, I mentioned Sidney Frank, the American who created Grey Goose. Before that, in the 1980s, he also took an obscure liqueur drunk by conservative Germans as an after-dinner digestif and promoted it very successfully in the youth and student markets. You might have heard of it: Jägermeister. Yes, the same guy made both Grey Goose and Jägermeister huge successes in the US market.

Here's a Schweppes ad from about 1965...tonic water by you-know-who.

Back to something more technical from MWC Barcelona on Monday.

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