Azor 30 Edição de Autor Gin

Overripe pineapple sets this bottle apart from every other island gin. Not fresh fruit but fruit taken past its peak, when the sugars have gone deep and the acidity has dropped, and the Azores grow the pineapples that make the idea possible. Drinks & Flavours Lda. runs the spirit through five separate distillations with nineteen botanicals and bottles it at 40%.

Citrus · Fruity · Herbal

That fruit does not taste the way a pineapple flavouring would. Overripe means dense and almost jammy rather than sharp, closer to preserved fruit than to a fresh slice, and it settles mid-palate and gives weight there without giving sugar. Lime works directly against it, cutting through with a hard green acidity that stops the recipe turning tropical in the cocktail-bar sense. Cardamom sits between the two, cool and slightly medicinal, and its camphor edge is what stops the fruit and the citrus from simply cancelling one another out. Angelica rootAngelicaThe root of a tall umbellifer, earthy and musky. After juniper and coriander it is the most common botanical: it binds the aromas and holds the finish.Glossary anchors the base with a dry, earthy woodiness, juniperJuniperThe one compulsory botanical: gin must taste predominantly of juniper. Its "berry" is really a small conifer cone, resinous and peppery.Glossary holds its pine line through the middle, and the remaining botanicals fill the gaps without asking for attention. Five distillations register in the texture rather than in the aroma: everything arrives clean, with no heaviness dragging behind the fruit.

Nothing here needs help from a mixer. Plain tonic, ice in quantity, a wedge of lime rather than anything tropical, since the recipe already carries its own fruit and a second one would crowd it. A thin slice of fresh pineapple is the alternative for anyone who wants the headline underlined. It also rewards a small pour neat, where the fruit and the lime separate most clearly. Advertising a fruit that is past its best is a strange decision, and it turns out to be an accurate one. It closes fruity, citric and dry.