Mystery solved! Written in code in 1638, The Distiller of London protected the distilling craft’s ‘mysteries’ practiced by the Worshipful Company of Distillers. Award-winning authors and drinks historians Anistatia Miller and Jared Brown deciphered these recipes. They offer modern-day readers glimpses of distilling’s evolution as it transformed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England from medicine to social beverage.

The new introduction to this slim volume includes ‘a new understanding of the origins of gin drawing upon evidence within the original text to support the support theory that gin evolved in London from distilling knowledge that arrived from Germany in 1527’- challenging the existing historiography with new primary evidence.

Other distillation books printed in England even earlier than The Distiller of London included juniper in their recipes. However, this volume contained the distillation guidelines sanctioned by England’s King Charles I for the Worshipful Company of Distillers of London: a regulatory body that oversaw the distilling trade before William and Mary ascended the English throne in 1688 and before the eighteenth-century Gin Craze brought illegitimate distillers and compounders before the public eye, soiling the budding industry’s reputation for nearly a century.

Present and future distillers and rectifiers-craft distilling’s new artisans-will be inspired. Lay readers catch a glimpse of a fascinating profession that continues to grow and change.