Almond leaf is the botanical almost nobody uses, and it explains why this Piedmontese bottle does not taste like the fruit gin its ingredient list suggests. Agricolo puts it beside juniper, raspberry and mint on a base of 100% Italian wheat, then bottles at 47%, which is a strength that carries aromatics rather than smothering them.

Raspberry leads and it leads as wild fruit rather than as jam. The berry note is tart and slightly seedy, closer to a hedgerow than to a dessert, and the juniper answers it with a dry austerity that keeps the sweetness in check from the first moment. Mint arrives across the middle, cooling and clean, and its job is to stop the fruit from settling: it lifts the palate each time the berry threatens to sit still. Almond leaf works differently again, marzipan-adjacent but without any sugar, adding a faintly bitter green nuttiness that gives the whole thing an unexpected floor. Soft touches of vanilla and cocoa run underneath all four, and they are what turn a bright recipe into a smooth one. At 47% the material has room to expand.

Fruit and mint together are a cocktail waiting to happen, so keep the mixer honest. Unflavoured tonic over a densely iced glass keeps the raspberry tart, while anything sweetened pushes it toward syrup inside a mouthful. Fresh mint is the closest echo of the recipe, and a few raspberries will suit whoever wants the fruit pushed forward; choose one, not both. Take a short measure without anything added as well, because the almond leaf surfaces most easily undiluted. A recipe of four botanicals at this strength trusts each one to hold its own, and none of them is padding. The wheat is Italian too, which keeps the entire bottle inside one country. It ends fruity, cool and dry.