SOME months after I arrived, I was told that our village has a reputation for “floating on gin”. This had not, so far, been my experience. Wine, sherry and whisky, perhaps, but I’d not had so much as a sniff of a juniper berry.

How deceptive are appearances. Some weeks ago, it was announced that there was to be a Gin Night in the village hall. It would be wrong to describe what followed as a stampede – nothing so vulgar, though there was a briskness in the step of some of those in pursuit of a ticket. What can be said is that on the night the place was packed, the atmosphere anticipatory, spirits – ahem – universally high.

Had it not been for a visit earlier this autumn from one of my oldest friends, with whom I broached a bottle of Bendicks that had lain untouched for more than a decade, I couldn’t have said when I’d last had Mother’s Ruin. Yet, I recalled that when I was finally old enough legally to buy a drink, it was always G&T. In those days most of my friends had heard of only one name. For gin, read Gordon’s. Those who ordered a different brand – there were only about three – were, in our eyes, on a par with those bar-salts who could distinguish blindfolded an Islay from a Perthshire malt, indeed an Arran from a Mull.

The moment when gin emerged from its quiet, dull corner of the gantry to become the darling of the cocktail lounge marks a new phase in drinking history. It followed the rise of craft beer, and endless discussions about mouthfeel, body and carbonation. The popularity of these brews seemed to hint at a new discernment among punters – not to mention a willingness to pay more for individuality, not just in taste but in presentation.

Gin’s resurgence is in the same vein. Pandering especially to women, an audience whisky makers have so far unsuccessfully tried to snare, even before the cap is twisted a modern gin bottle looks alluring. As if modelled on perfume bottles, today’s vast array of gins come in soft pinks, grapefruit lemons, raspberry, cucumber and amber. They smell so good you might be tempted to dab a little behind your ears.

Glamour and class are the tone these gins strive to create. It is a far cry from its early days, when its popularity was horrifyingly depicted by Hogarth. Gin Lane (1751) is a scene to rival Hieronymous Bosch. It shows a gin-sodden mother covered in syphilitic sores letting her baby fall to its death from her breast, another turning tricks to feed her habit, a man reduced to skin and bones by his addiction, and others murdered, committing murder, or going insane while under the influence.

There was no mistaking the message: gin, being ridiculously cheap, enticed the poor from a state of poverty to a condition of irretrievable destitution and disease. For those who might think Hogarth exaggerated, there were cases at the time of two mothers, one who murdered her baby to sell its clothes to buy gin, and another who, while drunk, allowed her infant to burn to death.

Nearly a century later, the problem persisted. As Dickens wrote, the root of the issue was not depravity but despair: “until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery... gin-shops will increase in number and splendour”.

Today, the purveyors of elegant gins would be appalled to be tainted by association with what was then called Ladies’ or Cuckold’s Delight. The clientele they hope to attract is affluent, their recherché recipes intended to pander to a refined palate, not a bottomless thirst. Hence the delightful combination of flavours we were coaxed to try, from a complex floral palette, to cinnamon and coriander, liquorice, jam and nutmeg.

As the Gin Night got into its swing, we sipped our samples under instruction from a local small batch distiller, whose brand tries to capture the scent of the Borders through the seasons. She regaled us with tales of distillers’ superstitions and the perils of last-minute supermarket orders. Thankfully she did not hear the man at my table who had read that in a blind tasting, Sainsbury’s own-label gin, costing a fraction of posher brands, had come out ahead.

We spilled out of the hall, a little flushed. Yet while I was not wholly sober, nor was I entirely convinced. In our nearby bar, the extensive gin menu – 23 varieties – points out that three-quarters of a G&T is the T. I suspect my taste buds have been dulled by years dedicated to wine, since I couldn’t have told I had been drinking craft gins rather than just mixers enlivened with slices of orange peel and strawberries. Now, on those too-frequent occasions when I am driving, I sip my puritanical tonic, infusing it with jasmine and rose petals, or pepper-corns and parsley as the mood takes me. Try it. It’s really not all that bad.