When he was a young boy,
Charles Tanqueray’s path through life seemed pretty clear. He was
the product of three straight generations of Bedfordshire clergymen,
so it was assumed he would take up the cloth himself.
He decided to do something different and began distilling gin in
1830 in a little plant in London’s Bloomsbury district. By 1847, he
was shipping his gin to colonies around the British Empire, where
many plantation owners and troops had developed a taste for
Tanqueray and tonic.