An estate better known for wine turning out a London Dry is a change of register, and Castiglion Del Bosco keeps this one deliberately traditional. Gin Del Drago is made in Italy and bottled at 40%, juniper the leading ingredient and the dry herbal reading staying close to the classical shape of the category. The London Dry designation matters: it means the flavour is built during distillation rather than added afterwards, and there is nowhere to hide a shortcut.

Juniper is the first thing on the nose and the last thing on the finish, green and resinous, drawing a clear line through the middle of the aroma. The herbal register around it is dry rather than sweet, more leaf and root than flower or fruit, and the effect is crisp and quite aromatic rather than rich. There is no fruit sweetness anywhere to soften the edges, which is what gives the gin its clean, slightly austere shape, and the palate stays firm from the attack right through to a dry close. It is a gin that reads as composed rather than demonstrative, and there is a real use for that: not every bottle on a shelf should be competing for attention.

That restraint is the argument for owning it. A juniper-forward dry gin remains the most flexible thing on any shelf, and this one accepts a plain tonic without complaint, with lemon peel as the garnish that flatters it most directly and nothing else required. It also makes a clean, well-defined Martini, where the herbal dryness comes properly into focus and there is nothing sweet to get in the way, and it sits comfortably under a splash of bitters in a longer build. What lingers is juniper, a dry herbal trace, and very little else at all - which is precisely the point of a bottle like this one.