The Dutch invent the alcohol industry
Our story reaches its pivot as gin arrives in England
Looking back, it seems inevitable that introducing very high proof spirits into a society where nobody had tried them before could potentially cause a problem. Life in the 1600s was pretty tough at the best of times what with your life expectancy being less than 40, living in horrific, crowded, unheated conditions, working 16 hours a day with safety regulations still several hundred years away. Spirits, however rough, provided access to a means to forget all of that, at least temporarily, which was very tempting. Putting society back together afterwards, really quite challenging.
Christianity was always pretty ambivalent to alcohol. The bible is full of people drinking wine, and all of the new spirits that had turned so many heads had all come from monasteries. The Church was not going to be the solution. Regardless, England was still overrun with preachers, politicians and pamphleteers all talking about the rupture in society that spirits had caused.
Everyone had a different reason to complain and a different theory why society was firmly on its way to hell, but, despite all the competing theories everyone agreed on two things that had changed society definitively for the worse.
Both had come back to England from the Thirty Years War1. One was a German habit of drinking healths or toasts, which was leading groups of people with momentum to drink themselves to oblivion, a habit we still happily/unhappily recognise today in 2025. The other one was a new, juniper flavoured grain spirit - Dutch jenever.
In all honesty, Jenever is more like whiskey than gin. It’s aged under wood, its base spirit is malted grain, it has a rich profile in the mouth, but, it is all about juniper, and temporarily at least, jenever is the hero of our story.
This period in history was the Netherlands moment. Its Golden Age. It was the most densely populated place in the World. It was an ambitious, mercantile, Protestant state with plans to run the world. The Dutch had opened the world’s first stock exchange in 1602.
But less than 100 years earlier none of that had been true. The Low Countries were ruled by Spain. There was no empire and certainly no wealth. Eighty years of fighting finally brought independence. The Dutch had belief, spirit, and momentum. As the need for fighting went away, in its place came the creation of the VOC - the United East India Company.
The VOC was not like anything the world had ever seen. The vision and scale was genuinely new - it was not an army, or an empire, it was a private company with shareholders. It had 5,000 ships, and 50,000 employees. It had a 21 year monopoly to manage trade with Asia, and it was doing it. The VOC brought 2.5 million tons of goods to Europe in the 17th Century. The English brought half a million.
The VOC brought access to every herb, spice and fruit in the world2. Bols, who claim to be the oldest distillery brand in the world3, grew up creating new liqueurs and genevers in the context of Lucas Bols’ prominent role in the VOC. De Kuyper moved on from making wooden barrels to making jenever. Nolet were founded, and their first still was called Distilleerketel #1. Three hundred years later they named their first vodka brand after it.
The industry was taking shape. The Dutch integrated spirits into their global trade network, with Schiedam jenever becoming available at VOC trading posts around the world. Jenever was the emblem. The badge of independence from Spain. That new independence, that belief, in future glories - it was manifested in jenever. It was new, and Dutch, and great. Drinking jenever was a source of pride to every Dutchman in a way alcohol had never been considered before.
During the war with Spain, Elizabeth I had sent English troops to support the Dutch army in their fight for independence. The Dutch troops at that time were all issued with half pint flasks of jenever each morning, and would slug away before a battle. As the legend goes, English soldiers and mercenaries were coming back to England in their thousands with an admiration for ‘Dutch Courage’ and a new love for ‘gen’. Yeh-NAY-veh were three sounds that English people just did not make, and putting them all together was impossible. ‘Jen’ would do.
Everything started to come together for gin. There were several years of amazing harvests, and the country was awash with grain. The third Anglo-Dutch war had ended, so importing jenever was easy again. Schiedam Hollands cost 36 florins a barrel - unlike 70 florins for French brandy. Jenever was now available in most taverns on a tap, especially in ports, and then in 1697 the first malt house and distillery opened at a former debtor’s prison in Plymouth. Gin had truly arrived, and England would never be the same again.
The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) began as a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire but evolved into a broader European power struggle involving then powerhouses France, Sweden, Spain, and Denmark. The war devastated Central Europe through combat, disease, and famine. The conflict ultimately ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which established key principles of state sovereignty and religious tolerance we recognise today, while significantly weakening the Holy Roman Empire's central authority and strengthening France's position in Europe.
I’ve left aside the brutal history of slavery and murder that the VOC is known for. The VOC laid the groundwork for centuries of colonial exploitation. In the Banda Islands, the VOC killed or deported the entire native population to control nutmeg production. They maintained slaves everywhere, they destroyed crops to maintain high prices, they used military force to collect ‘debts’ from local rulers, established the foundation for apartheid in South Africa, and so much more. The English East India Company eventually surpassed the VOC in both financial success and brutality.
Controversial. Nobody knows. Bushmills claim a founding date of 1608 although their first documented license was 1784. Many Italian distilleries claim founding dates in the 1400s. Bols claims of 1575 but they don’t appear to be distillers at that time. Like so many arguments like this, it doesn’t make any difference what the truth is.