Pink gins are almost always built on a sweet fruit. This one is built on a bitter one, and that single decision separates it from most of the category: pink grapefruit brings pith bitterness rather than berry sweetness, and the pale colour it produces is a by-product rather than the objective. Buss Spirits adds no sugar, no dye and no artificial flavouring, and bottles at 40%.

Bitterness is the organising principle and everything else is arranged around it. Fresh pink grapefruit leads with a zesty, resinous sharpness and a bitter edge that lingers well past the fruit, and it holds that position from the aroma to the finish. Orange and lemon work above it, adding a rounder and a sharper citrus respectively without softening the grapefruit itself. Then the recipe supplies its counterweights. Vanilla settles a creamy warmth at the base, iris root binds it with a powdery floral note, and liquorice lengthens the close with a sweetness that comes from no sugar at all. Cardamom cools the middle, coriander adds warm seed spice, angelica the dry earth, and juniper holds a green line that keeps the whole thing inside its category. The pale pink is what grapefruit gives when nothing else is added.

Bitterness wants a mixer that respects it. A neutral tonic is essential, since a flavoured mixer would merely repeat the fruit, and the glass should be properly cold and heavily iced. A wedge of pink grapefruit repeats the recipe, while orange peel is the rounder alternative. Silver at both the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles and the IWSC in 2018 suggests the bitterness convinced people. A pink gin that tastes bitter is a contradiction the category has spent years avoiding. It closes bitter, citric and dry.