Get gin back on board

What are we to make of the startling news that gin sales are down, but vodka is up? Gin may not have started as a London drink — the name derives from Geneva — but the capital made gin its own.

During the 18th-century Gin Craze, Hogarth’s lurid engraving of Gin Lane associated it with social decay but there is still nothing like a gin and tonic as a restorative. In London, the growth of small distilleries such as Sipsmith has been a welcome development.

It is hard to imagine this city falling out of love with gin. Vodka comes in any number of variants but in London there is only one Mothers’ Ruin.