The base spirit is distilled from acorns and carob. Not grain, not grape, not potato: the two things the montado produces in quantity, fermented and run through a still, and no other gin on any shelf begins that way. Black Pig works in the Alentejo at 42%, and the whole bottle amounts to an argument about a single landscape.

An acorn base carries flavour of its own and is meant to. It carries a nutty, faintly tannic weight that no cereal spirit provides, and carob adds a dark, cocoa-adjacent sweetness alongside it, so the foundation already tastes of something before any botanical goes near it. Everything above it extends the same idea. Almonds, walnuts and chestnuts continue the nut register, each one differently: almond drier and marzipan-like, walnut more bitter and tannic, chestnut softer and sweeter. Citrus lifts the top with the only real brightness anywhere in the recipe, and the local herbs run a green thread across the middle. Juniper holds the line that keeps the category honest. Earthy and nutty is the summary, and it is genuinely unlike anything a conventional list would produce.

A gin built this heavily wants a mixer that cuts. Neutral tonic, ice piled to the rim, and a firm pour; anything sweetened turns the carob into dessert. Orange peel in a twist raises the nuts better than lemon would. Undiluted over a large cube is the honest introduction to the base spirit, and it is worth doing at least once before mixing anything. Gold at Virtus in 2019 and again in 2020, gold at Stuttgart and in China the same year, and silver in the World Gin Awards the year after that. Fermenting what the landscape drops on the ground is older than distilling and rarer than it should be. Fermenting what the landscape drops on the ground is older than distilling and rarer than it should be, and nothing about the result tastes borrowed. It ends nutty, earthy and dry.