I did have an Auntie Hannah ...... (Plymouth Gin)

Member Name: sidneygee

Product:	Plymouth Gin
Date:	05/04/01 (441 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Strength, , dry flavour

Disadvantages: Price; , not as good as Gordon's Export Strength with tonic.

When I was very young, say around 1950, there was never any ‘drink’ in the house except at Christmas time. For those of you much too young to remember or to be around, the immediate post-war years were times of relative hardship for many people, with rationing of many commodities. There were very few luxuries and those that were around were expensive.

Spirits were then very much classified as a 'luxury' and I have no doubt that many DooYooers will be breathing a big sigh of relief that they were born much later and did not have to experience such austere times. I actually recall seeing a newspaper advertisement for Gordon’s Gin in 1952, giving the price at a little over One Pound Ten Shillings a bottle (£1.50 for the finacially 'immature'), and that was at a time when the normal working wage was about £7 a week........

Thus, 'DRINK' (!!) in general was very much a luxury item.

I also recall that there was no television in South Wales very much before the Coronation in 1953 and there were thus no ‘Christmas Specials’ to look forward to, so that 'good family conversation' (and many blazing rows !) was very much the vogue.

When Aunts and Uncles were in for evenings of ‘crack’ at around Christmas time, then I recall there was always a bottle of ‘Plymouth Gin’ in to drink and assist in the celebrations (and the good ole' rows/slanging matches and eventual making-ups).

So why was it ‘Plymouth Gin’ ?

Well, Gordon’s Gin was described by my dear Auntie Hannah as “Lounge-lizard’s Gin”, and having come across a number of 'lounge lizards' in her time, she was an expert in judging such creatures. Auntie Hannah was my father's eldest sister (of 3).

‘Plymouth Gin’ on the other hand, is described as "the Seafarer’s Gin", and since my father and
his father before him, and my mother’s two brothers, were all seafarers, it was the Gin of choice in the Gee Sr. Family household at Christmas time.

Plymouth Gin is distilled by Coates & Co at what is described as the "oldest Gin Distillery in Britain", built in 1793 at the former Black Friars Priory in Plymouth. According to the advertising blurb, it is made "with water from Dartmoor, in its original hand-crafted copper pot stills and ... won a Gold Medal in the 1884 Health Exhibition".

It is sold with a strange alcoholic strength of 41.2% Alcohol by Volume (41.2%Vol) which is described as "... strength which holds all our seven botanicals perfectly."

I know that this strength may sound a strange figure, but there is an explanation for this.

Up until the 1970’s, the alcoholic strength was always quoted as ‘degrees proof’, so that the ‘normal’ strength of whisky was 70 degrees proof (equivalent to 40% Vol.), and Vodka was 65.5 degrees proof.

100 degrees proof spirit was said to be that strength of spirit which, if mixed with gunpowder and burned off, will leave the gunpowder just sufficiently dry to ignite afterwards. That was the extent of the knowledge of methods of food and drink analysis in the 18th century when spirituous beverages were first categorised and taxed according to strength.

Thus, Plymouth Gin was sold at '75 degrees proof', compared with most other retail gins of that time which were 70 degrees proof (40% Vol.). This was before they adulterated Gordon’s Gin (and others) with extra water to pull it down to the equivalent of 65.5 degrees proof (37.5% Vol.) and attract a 'lower duty' (and thus 'extra profit' for the Capitalist producers ....... grrrrrrr ....).

Plymouth Gin seemed to disappear from the market place for a number of years and it was only about 3 years’ ago th
at I saw it on sale and the dark recesses at the back of my brain glowed into action, triggering the memory cells. Naturally I bought a bottle, and took it as a gift (with a bottle of Noilly Prat Vermouth) when visiting the old rascal, my Auntie Hannah. Then in her late 80’s, and in a residential home, she was delighted to see it again after so many years, and a large ‘Gin & it’ was soon in my hand whilst she described some of the antics she had ‘got up to’ in the 1940’s.

For those of you like me, - graduates of the excesses of the 1960’s and beyond, who think they have partied in their lives, our parents and sometimes grandparents could have run rings around us with what many of them got up to in the 1940’s and before.

I should say that my Auntie Hannah kept her feminine allure (and a string of ‘admirers’) until her early 80's so well that, when Heather and I were married in 1974, my best man ("Big Al") who was the same age as me (28), tried to ‘get off’ with my Auntie Hannah, who was then a ‘mature lady’ in her mid 60’s.

“ My, but could your Auntie put those G&T’s away”, Al confided with me later, “I really thought I would be in there”. She also confided in me that she was “... sorry to disappoint your friend, but I doubt if he could have done very much for me... ”(!!!).

So there was obviously at least some truth in the stories that went around the family circle after that wedding.

Anyway, Plymouth Gin is very well-established and has that 'little extra' in alcoholic strength. Unfortunately you have to pay a premium price for this over my favourite gin, Gordon’s, of about £3 a bottle.

The flavour is subtly different from Gordon’s Gin, somewhat ‘lighter’ and ‘drier’. Thus it makes a very keen constituent of &#
8216;Gin and it’ as my Auntie called the concoction with dry vermouth – she was especially fond of ‘Noilly Prat’, rather than the usual ‘Martini’. Thus, it is not surprising that I do not find it quite as good in a G&T as Gordon’s, and since I do not drink ‘Gin & it’ as often as G&T (and Heather only drinks Gin with Tonic or orange juice), we probably use about 5 bottles of Gordon’s Gin to each bottle of Plymouth. But whenever I drink ‘Plymouth & it’, I think of my Auntie Hannah and wonder....... .........

"Was I born too early, or too late (or at just the right time ?"


And I hum to myself one of the verses of the Grande Olde Welsh Hymn, "Kosher Bailey" :

"I did have an Auntie Hannah
Who did play the Grand Johannah
She did also play the fiddle !
(Up the side and down the middle)".

© Sidneygee 2002

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