Twenty-three months in an ex-Caperdonich cask is a long time for a gin, and the choice of cask matters as much as the duration. Asta Morris, the Belgian independent bottler behind it, works in small batches and drew on wood from a distillery that has since closed, then bottled the result at 46% ABV. Juniper, vanilla, citrus peel and cacao make up a deliberately short recipe, designed to leave the barrel room to speak for itself.

The nose opens fresh rather than woody, clear citrus with a soft juniper behind it, which is not at all what nearly two years in a cask would normally be expected to give. The palate is where the ageing shows: tangerine and orange fill the middle, rounder and sweeter in impression than the aroma promised, and vanilla arrives underneath as a gentle sweetness that reads as wood rather than as sugar. Cacao is the closing element and the most interesting one of the four, contributing a dry, faintly bitter edge that stops the whole thing turning soft and gives the finish its balance. Juniper stays present throughout, pushed well behind the wood yet firm enough that nobody could mistake this for anything but a gin.

This is built for sipping more than for mixing, and it repays being treated that way. Neat, or over one large cube, is where the cask and the cacao are clearest, and gentle dilution brings the vanilla forward. If you want it long, plain tonic and a minimal garnish are essential, an orange twist following the tangerine note directly. Avoid sweet mixers entirely, since they erase the cacao bitterness before anything else. A cask from a closed distillery cannot be replaced, which makes this a bottling with a natural end date. It closes woody, citric and dry.