Skateboards, tattoos, the purest and most ethically sourced coffee and food, woodcutter shirts, pink hair, and an overpriced ‘citrus for gin’ offering from Pick n Pay – these are just a few things one would expect in the quiver of any self-respecting hipster.

Luckily, today’s availability of high-quality gin means the latter will not result in any Hipster’s Ruin – like it did in the 1600s, when gin was (and still is) known as ‘Mother’s Ruin’.

Mother’s Ruin, you asked?

That’s right, it’s time for a little alcohol slang lesson.

This story starts with Prince William, with GinKin to take it from here:

In the late 1600s, Dutch Prince William of Orange took the British throne. In order to reduce the amount of French brandy being imported into the country (Orange had a large feud with France during his reign), our new King created legislation that allowed anyone to distil and sell gin in their homes. This lead to thousands of gin distilleries popping up all over England between the years of 1695-1735.

That might sound pretty ideal, and South Africans know all about the gin revolution currently sweeping the country, but there were some dire consequences to these distilleries:

• Impoverished women would drink cheap “bathtub” gin to forget their troubles. This often led to child neglect – with some women even selling their children to get their hands on a bottle of the poorest quality gin.
• Gin was apparently used as a contraceptive by some of the lower classes.
• As gin was considered to have medicinal properties, women were allowed to drink among men for the first time. As you can imagine, at the levels gin was being consumed, this led to some pretty poor decision making.
• A pint of gin and a very hot bath was commonly considered a “cure” for pregnancy.
• The availability of unregulated, poor quality gin, combined with ludicrously high consumption levels, led to many men and women becoming sterile. Records from the time state that the average Londoner as drinking 10 gallons a year. This was so common that at one stage the death rate in London was higher than the birth rate.

I’m sure, by now, the term ‘Mother’s Ruin’ is making sense, but a picture is worth a thousand words, and ‘Gin Lane’ is quite something.

Printed by William Hogarth, the brilliant and brutal satirical artist of the times, it shows a drunken woman with ulcerated legs, taking snuff as her baby falls into the gin-vault below:

You know you’re serious when you have something called a gin-vault.

Eventually, the British government was forced into action, a new ‘Gin Act’ was passed, and gin was never again quite so much of a scourge.

A far cry from today, where high-quality, reassuringly expensive gin like Cape Town Gin is available everywhere.

The Pink Lady is consistently amongst the top-selling alcohols on Takealot, and it doesn’t come more Cape Town than the Rooibos Red.

Infused with organic, handpicked rooibos to extract the essence of this remarkable plant, indigenous to the Cederberg region of the Western Cape, it goes down a treat.

Rumour has it that it’s so tasty, the housewives of Constantia are drinking it over lunch, in place of their usual Chardonnay.

Don’t worry, I’m sure the nannies are looking after the kids.

[sources:ginkin&historicuk]