Willow bark is a medicine before it is a flavour. It is where salicin comes from, the compound behind aspirin, and its taste is correspondingly bitter and astringent rather than pleasant on its own. Placing it in a gin is a decision about structure. Mikrogorzelnia distils in Warsaw using only plants native to Poland, at 40%, under vacuum.

Barks and roots dominate the lower half of this recipe, which is unusual and gives the whole thing an earthiness that flowers alone never produce. Willow bark supplies a dry tannic bitterness that grips the palate. Burdock root works beside it, muddy and vegetal, and it reads as genuinely of the soil. Angelica root anchors both. Above them the green material takes over: pine shoots bright and resinous, wormwood sharply bitter and medicinal, hops adding a different bitterness again, floral and lighter. Then the flowers appear and they are what keep the bitterness from becoming punishing. Elderflower is honeyed, chamomile soft and faintly apple-like, sloe flower delicate and almond-scented, and yellow sweet clover contributes a hay-like sweetness that binds them together. Vacuum distillation keeps the fragile ones intact by never letting the temperature rise far.

Bitterness on this scale wants a mixer that does not fight it. Neutral tonic, ice without restraint, and a proper measure so the flowers survive alongside the bark. Lemon peel lifts the top; anything green and leafy suits the herbal core better and is the more honest choice. A Negroni works surprisingly well, the wormwood meeting the vermouth on its own ground. Restricting a recipe to one country's flora rules out every easy option. Bark and root are what a herbalist would have reached for; a distiller reaching for them too is the unusual part. It ends bitter, floral and earthy.