The Domfront pear is grown for perry, not for eating. It is small, hard and astringent, the sort of fruit that would disappoint anyone biting into it, and those qualities are exactly what make it useful in a spirit. Christian Drouin builds this limited edition around it in Normandy at 42%, with five botanicals macerated and distilled separately, in a run of 8,550.

A perry pear behaves nothing like a dessert one. Its fruit is delicate rather than sugary, closer to white flesh and orchard skin than to anything syrupy, and it occupies the centre of the palate with a quiet persistence that a sweeter variety would lose to the alcohol. Around it, five botanicals each do one job. Lemon cuts the top with a clean citric lift. Vanilla settles a soft creaminess at the bottom, and the pairing of pear and vanilla is the axis the whole thing turns on. Iris root binds them together with its powdery floral character, the note that a perfumer would call the fixative. Then black pepper arrives late and dry, the counterweight that stops the fruit from being merely pretty. Juniper holds a clean line beneath everything. White fruit, gentle spice and a floral undertone is the honest summary of what reaches the glass.

Delicacy is both the risk and the reward, and a heavy hand loses the pear before the second sip. Neat is where the pear is clearest, and a tonic should be neutral and used sparingly. A slice of pear repeats the recipe; elderflower is the producer's alternative and lifts the floral side instead. World's Best Signature Botanical Gin at the 2024 awards in London suggests the fruit convinced people who taste for a living. Naming a fruit nobody eats raw is a strange way to sell a bottle, and an honest one. It ends fruity, peppery and soft.