Asparagus is a vegetable, and no vegetable belongs on a gin's botanical list according to almost every recipe written. Xiamen Balang puts it there anyway, alongside grass and menthol, and the result at 46% is a gin that tastes green in a way European recipes never attempt.

The vegetal side arrives after the opening rather than with it. The aroma is crisp pine first, which sets an expectation the palate immediately complicates: the initial taste is bold and then falls away quickly, and what replaces it is the herbaceous material. Asparagus contributes a distinctly vegetal note, savoury and slightly sulphurous in the way the vegetable itself is, and grass adds a fresh green sharpness above it. Menthol comes third in that group and it is what changes the temperature, cooling the middle where the spices would otherwise build too fast. Then the warm material arrives to balance it: ginger with its prickling heat, cinnamon drier and sweeter, cardamom cool and aromatic, coriander bridging spice and citrus. Citrus peels supply a bitter edge rather than a sweet one. The texture is warm and the finish is spicy and citric at once, holding for some time.

A gin this unconventional is easy to over-mix. Neutral tonic over a glass thick with ice serves, and the pour should be generous, since 46% and a vegetal profile both lose out to dilution. A wedge of lime cuts across the spice; a strip of cucumber follows the vegetal side instead and is the more interesting choice. A short measure undiluted is worth taking as well, since the asparagus is easiest to identify there. Chinese distilling is young enough that nobody has written its rules yet. Reaching for a vegetable is the kind of decision a distiller makes when nobody has told them it is forbidden. It closes green, spiced and warm.