Salt does not survive a still. It has no vapour to give, so a distilled gin cannot carry it however much goes into the pot, and that is why this one is compounded instead: F.lli Pistone macerates its botanicals rather than distilling them, and Mediterranean sea salt reaches the bottle intact. At 43% the saline note is the first thing the palate registers.

Salinity behaves unlike any other flavour in a gin. It does not add taste so much as sharpen everything already present, and here it arrives first, marked and unmistakably marine, before the rest of the recipe unfolds behind it. The herbs come next and they are the ones that grow within reach of the same coastline. Sage is dry and slightly dusty, rosemary resinous enough to shake hands with the juniper, and myrtle sits between them with its own dark, faintly berried aroma. Then the citrus opens the whole thing out: sweet orange for roundness, bitter orange for a bitterness of pith that keeps the fruit truthful, grapefruit for a clean sharp lift above both. Orange blossom adds the perfumed note that ties the fruit to the flowers, and cardamom cools the middle. Juniper holds throughout.

Salt and citrus are a bartender's pairing before they are a distiller's, and the glass should respect that. Neutral tonic, ice right up, and a wedge of grapefruit rather than lemon, since the bitterness matches the saline edge better. A rosemary sprig makes the alternative, following the herbs instead. Sweetened mixers are the one thing to refuse outright. Compounding is often a shortcut; here it is the only way the idea works at all. A gin you can taste the sea in, rather than one that merely refers to it, is a narrower proposition and a more honest one. It ends saline, citric and herbal.