Gin Cuvée Terre de Glace

The place this gin describes lies three thousand kilometres from where it is made. Distillerie MD works in Champagne-Ardenne and built a recipe about Iceland: plants that survive subarctic cold and volcanic ground, assembled into twenty-two botanicals and bottled by hand at 43%, each bottle numbered.

Citrus · Woody · Spicy · Floral · Herbal

Twenty-two is a lot of plants, and the composition is unusually layered because of it. The nose is deep rather than bright, and the two descriptors that stand out are antique wax and pine resin, neither of which belongs to any single plant on the list. Lavender, rose, almond and cinnamon sit beneath them, and the combination reads warm and slightly waxy before the palate confirms anything. The attack is fresh and delicate, which the aroma does not predict, and it moves quickly into herbal, peppery and woody territory. Grapefruit and lime supply the sharper citrus while bergamot perfumes it, liquorice adds sweetness without sugar, and eucalyptus turns the middle cool and mentholated. Clove closes it with a dark spice. What lingers afterwards is candied lemon, thyme, rosewood and liquorice, a finish long enough to work through in stages.

A recipe this dense punishes a busy mixer. Neutral tonic, a deeply iced glass, and a firm measure so the twenty-two stay legible. Grapefruit peel follows the citrus better than lemon; a thyme sprig follows the herbs. Neat over a large cube shows the waxy, resinousResinousAn aroma reminiscent of pine or fir resin. It is juniper's signature, due to compounds such as pinene.Glossary side that tonic tends to wash away. Hand numbering on a twenty-two-plant recipe suggests batches small enough that the numbers mean something. Very few distilleries would set a recipe in a country they have no connection to, and fewer still would use twenty-two plants to do it. It closes mentholated, spiced and long.