Not for the first time, I’m confused. My search for a gin distillery has led me to a quiet residential street in West London. Can this really be the place? I check my dog-eared A-Z map again. Yeah, this is right: The garage in front of me — little more than a lean-to, really — is the spot.

This is the home of Sipsmith, the first copper-pot distillery to open in London in almost 200 years. This is where London’s recent gin revival began.

And once the careworn blue wooden door swings open, it feels like the most natural spot on earth for a game-changing distillery. This place has serious drinking history — it once served as the great beer and whisky writer Michael Jackson’s study — and there’s a ramshackle charm about it that reflects its purpose.

Then there’s the magnificent still, which dominates proceedings from its position at the far end of the room. Named Prudence in honor of former British prime minister Gordon Brown (who made great play of his own financial prudence before Britain’s economy collapsed around him), it resembles a brass band — if that brass band had been designed by someone with a particularly surreal sense of humor. Prudence bulges and swoops and shines like the buttons on a Royal Marine’s coat.

Sipsmith was established in 2009. Since then, a trickle of other distilleries, including Sacred in Highgate, a similarly leafy and unlikely spot for a ginmaker, and the recently launched City of London, have followed suit, joining the English capital’s only remaining historic distiller, Beefeater. At the same time, the drink has become increasingly fashionable, forcing its way onto menus at some of the city’s most popular bars and restaurants. For so long vodka’s slightly dowdy cousin, gin is sexy again.

‘GIN MADNESS’

It’s a great story, not least because London, home of the world’s most popular gin style (London Dry), is so inextricably linked to the juniper-infused spirit. The city’s residents have been knocking the drink back in varying quantities ever since the end of the 17th century, when William of Orange arrived from the Netherlands bearing muscular Protestantism and a drink called Jenever.

William’s obsequious courtiers soon began drinking Jenever, and his thirsty subjects followed suit. By the middle of the 18th century, everyone was drinking gin, and plenty of people were making it: One house in every four in the City of London reputedly contained distilling equipment.

This was the era of “Gin Madness,” and it didn’t end well. The drink became so cheap that it represented a serious health hazard, at least if you believe William Hogarth, the British artist who produced a very famous and frequently reproduced etching called Gin Lane in 1751. The image illustrates the multitudinous ill effects of drinking gin: Most notable is the central image of a mother, her face grotesquely aged and her legs scarred due to malnutrition, who in her gin-addled stupor is allowing a child to fall from her lap to its likely death.

Things are rather more wholesome today. There’s a worldwide revival in gin-making going on, including in the United States. The founders of Sipsmith, Sam Galsworthy and Fairfax Hall, were inspired by the revival in American ginmaking, Galsworthy tells me. “I used to work in the U.S., and I noticed this really exciting movement,” says the 37-year-old. “We’re like the American craft distillers in that yield is not our primary focus. It’s about quality. It’s about getting the best possible spirit out of every batch.”