Luperia Gin

The name is the old one for La Louvière, the town where this is distilled, and the wolf on the bottle follows from the same root. Naming a gin after a place is common; naming it after what the place used to be called is a narrower claim, and it fits a project built to be local before it is anything else. Bottled at 40%.

Citrus · Floral · Fruity

The recipe is short and the ambition is deliberately modest, which is not the same as careless. Grapefruit and lemon peel drive the citrus, the grapefruit supplying bitterness and the lemon a cleaner sharpness above it, and together they define the profile more than anything else does. Rose then adds a floral softness that takes the edge off the fruit, and it is a small quantity doing precise work: enough to round the citrus, not enough to perfume it. Juniper holds a gentle structure underneath, present without pushing, which suits a gin aiming at freshness rather than intensity.

The nose opens on lively citrus with the floral nuance appearing behind. The palate is smooth and light, citrus-forward, with a subtle sweetness owed to the fruit and not to sugar, and the texture is round and easy. The close is clean and refreshing, citrus and flower trailing off together.

Neutral tonic, a grapefruit or lemon garnish, and it does exactly what it set out to do. Neat or over ice works too, and at this weight neither treatment loses anything. Not every gin needs to be difficult, and a local bottle that people will actually finish is a legitimate target. Building for one's own town rather than for a shelf in another country is a different exercise entirely, and the restraint of this recipe follows from that choice rather than from any shortage of ambition or of skill.