This slim visual encyclopedia of plants involved in the production of gin – just over a hundred pages, and rich with images – is the result of a collaboration between Chris Thorogood, deputy director and head of science of Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum, and Simon Hiscock, director of Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum. Together, they briefly tell the story of gin and then profile its constituent ingredients, which are derived from plants that span the world and are used in a variety of ways.

Gin is a botanical spirit flavoured with juniper and, often, citrus, coriander, orris root or other plant-derived essences. Although sundry liquors have been flavoured with aromatic plants since antiquity, modern juniper-infused gin was first distilled in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century by physicians seeking to cure tropical fevers. (The Botany of Gin does not offer a historical account of why the Dutch were in the tropics in the first place.) The eighteenth century saw the popularity of cheap spirits skyrocket in England, giving rise first to the excesses of the so-called gin craze – famously depicted by William Hogarth – and then the Gin Act of 1751. Irish gin-smith Aeneas Coffey introduced the column or patent still in the early nineteenth century, and there the history of the spirit is paused in this volume.

The Botany of Gin summarizes the three ways of infusing gin with flavour: distilling or vapor infusion, concentrating or liquid infusion, and compounding or adding flavouring directly to the neutral spirit and water. Different choices of botanical ingredients and infusion techniques produce different gins, of which there are two types: classical, or primarily juniper-flavoured, and contemporary, or more floral or fruity. Both crisp London dry gins and nuttier Dutch genevers are varieties of classical gin. The major international brands largely produce classical gins. ‘Artisan’ and ‘hand-crafted’ gins are simply gins made in smaller batches. Thorogood and Hiscock highlight one artisanal variety in particular: ‘the Physic Gin’ produced by Oxford Artisan Distillery in collaboration with the University of Oxford Botanic Garden. The garden was founded in 1621 for the teaching of herbal medicine and is therefore roughly as old as gin itself.

After the introduction, the majority of The Botany of Gin is formatted as spreads which alternate with images of plants at left and text at right, and vice versa. Each entry tells the plant's scientific name and plant family (all citrus are in the ‘rue’ family, for example), along with a paragraph-long description and short notes on its distribution and uses in gin. The images are ‘interpretive oil paintings’ by Thorogood: realistic but not attempts to mimic photographs, colourful but muted. The botanicals are organized into five chapters, not by the relatedness of different plants but by the appearances of plant-derived ingredients (fruit-like versus leaf- or stem-like, for example). This gives the core of the book a somewhat nostalgic feel, like a natural-history text from the era of the early gin makers.

The first botanical chapter, fruits and berries, covers the core ingredients of gin. These include the pine-scented juniper, oranges and mandarins, lemons and limes, grapefruits, and cucumbers. The second botanical chapter, tropical fruits, features plants from warm climates such as longan, baobab, coconut and vanilla. The third botanical chapter, dried fruits, seeds and spices, includes ‘warm’-tasting plants such as coriander, angelica, saffron, allspice, lavender grains of paradise, and – without acknowledgement of its stark cultural difference from the other plants – opium poppy. Many fruits and spices are used in gin-making, and a longer text might follow some of these spices across centuries and through different ports in order to trace relationships among plants, shipping networks, states and drinking cultures.

The fourth botanical chapter – leaves and stems – features plants with distinctly ‘green’ flavours such as bay, sage, rosemary, thyme, makrut or kaffir lime, lotus, lavender and absinthe. The fifth botanical chapter, roots, rhizomes and bark, includes unique plants such as orris or root ginger, licorice and ginger. (A final section on garnishes is a single paragraph.) These botanical entries contain fascinating biological errata: makrut produces hourglass-shaped double leaves; lavender plants provide good nectar for honey.

As an introduction to a wide variety of edible and medicinal plants, The Botany of Gin is charming. Thorogood and Hiscock offer a kaleidoscopic portrait of gin from the standpoint of the botanic garden. On a prosaic level, however, the authors might have provided somewhat more biological information about plants, such as why certain types produce specific volatile compounds, and why some humans enjoy smelling and tasting particular arrangements of these compounds. In fact, this book could stand to be twice as long.

On an intellectual level, Thorogood and Hiscock do not deeply engage with the social contexts of gin production and consumption. Colonialism is mentioned only in passing, despite gin having been a product of Dutch and British empire. The gin and tonic is called out as a tasty beverage, but its importance to British rule in India is elided. The authors do not discuss the revival of interest in ‘artisanal’ products such as gin in terms of class or race. Overall, both the past and present of gin remain sketches in this most concise and timeless-feeling botany.