Quin and Tonic

Saucyman, What is quinine? -Ginned Up

Quinine is a white powder made from the bark of the cinchona tree, which is native to the Andes Mountains in Peru and Ecuador. The 25 to 50 foot tall tree would eventually be classified by Linnaeus himself, it was originally referred to as both ‘fever tree’ and ‘Jesuit bark’ - the latter due to its association with The Society of Jesus: The order promoted the bark as treatment for malaria, a disease endemic to Rome and the Vatican at the beginning of the Renaissance.

Malaria (from the Italianate mal aira or ‘bad air’) was believed to be caught by the breathing of humid, heavy air around the swamps of Rome. Malaria is not an airborne pathogen, the disease is actually transmitted by a mosquito, the female anopheles injects a parasite in the blood of the people she feasts upon – inducing a fever running 48-72 hours. Long-term effects of the disease are anemia, enlarged spleen and possibly death.

Quinine works by lessening the severity of the symptoms of malaria – it reduces fever and is a muscle relaxer - reducing the shakes which often accompany the fever. The ground bark also works as a prophylactic against the disease, which is odd considering malaria is not native to Peru where the Jesuits first learned about the healing properties of the tree from the locals.

Quinine is an alkaloid. On the Ph scale, alkaloids are the opposite of acids. And on the taste spectrum they are base, like toothpaste - chalky in texture, only not sweetened so they are bitter on the tongue – generally speaking alkaloids are not prized for flavor. Which is why quinine is often combined with other ingredients to make it more palatable. Mary Poppins was so sure about the alchemy of medicine and sugar she would literally sing its virtues. More stoic Brits, particularly those living in colonial outposts, non-musically added sweetened carbonated water and gin to help the medicine go down in a most delightful way, with the added bonus that a lime twist kept the scurvy at bay.

Despite the Jesuits encouraging people to plant 5 trees for each one they felled for medicine, by the start of WW II the cinchona tree had been over-harvested nearly to extinction in South America: Almost all the fever trees were grown on plantations in Dutch colony of Java, with the actual quinine extracted in laboratories in Holland. By 1941 the Nazis had moved into Amsterdam and Japanese forces had annexed Java, leaving Allied armies without a source of the anti-malarial febrifuge for troops fighting in the equatorial areas of Africa, the South Pacific and in Southeast Asia. After the war, Chloroquine and Mefloquine (Larium) became the preferred anti-malarial drugs, although side effects and disease resistance hamper the effectiveness of the synthetic replacements.

Now no longer used to fight malaria, quinine is pretty much a flavoring for tonic water, Campari and assorted bitters. As it has been for a while; in the 1880s the nearly 100-year-old manufacturer of mineral waters, Schweppes introduced quinine tonic water, later bottled and sold as Indian Tonic Water. When introduced to the US markets in 1953, the company agreed to drop the word tonic from the product since it implied therapeutic qualities.

The last decade has brought either a revival or a birth of improved tonic waters. While drinkers can be pretty particular about the type of gin they want to drink, they have been forced to take chemically harsh, corn syrup sweetened tonics with little choice. Thomas Keller’s Per Se makes its own tonic, as do a few bars here in Portland. Jordan Silbert makes, bottles and distributes Q Tonic – carbonated water mixed from quinine and agave nectar. Stirrings, a Massachusetts based manufacturer of upscale/FooFoo bottled mixers has introduced a triple-filtered tonic and the people who bring us Plymouth Gin are now distributing Fever-Tree Premium Indian Tonic Water made with the felonious sounding “pharmaceutical-grade” quinine.