The colour is real. This gin is pink because raspberries were distilled into it, not because anything was added afterwards, and Buss Spirits states plainly that there is no sugar, no synthetic dye and no artificial flavouring in the bottle. In a category where the opposite is common, that alone is worth noting. It is built on 100% grain spirit and bottled at 37.5%.

Raspberry is the headline and the recipe is arranged to support it rather than to compete. Vanilla is the most important of the supporting botanicals: it softens the fruit and gives the palate the roundness that a sweetened gin would have bought with sugar instead. Iris root works underneath in the same direction, powdery and faintly floral, and it is the ingredient that binds the fruit to everything else. Orange and lemon lift the top with clean citrus, keeping the berry from sitting heavy. Then the classical spine appears behind all of it: juniper holding a green pine centre, coriander adding warm seed spice, angelica supplying dry earth, cardamom a cool camphor edge, and liquorice lengthening the finish with a sweetness containing no sugar at all. The palate is layered and genuinely sweet-tasting without being sweetened, which is a harder trick than it sounds.

The lower strength makes this an easy bottle to mix badly. Use a tonic without flavouring, ice the glass first, and be generous with the spirit, since 37.5% dilutes faster than a standard gin. Fresh raspberries make the obvious garnish and repeat what is in the recipe; orange peel is the sharper alternative. Anything sweetened is redundant here. A pink gin that earns its colour honestly deserves the benefit of the doubt. It ends fruity, floral and gently sweet.