Hinoki, the Japanese cypress used for bathhouses and shrine timber, is the botanical that gives Sakurao Classic its particular dryness. Sakurao Distillery works it alongside green tea, ginger, red perilla and local citrus, with juniper holding the centre, and bottles the result in Hiroshima at 40% ABV. The recipe leans clearly Japanese without abandoning the shape of a dry gin.

The nose opens on citrus, clean and faintly zesty, juniper close behind, a resinous thread of cypress running underneath. Green tea does not arrive at the top but in the middle of the palate, dry and lightly tannic, and red perilla adds a cool herbal note, almost minty, hard to place for anyone who has not met shiso before. Ginger warms the back end without ever turning hot. At 40% the weight stays light and the finish is short and clean, closing on cypress and tea rather than on sweetness.

Classified as a New Western Dry, it belongs to the family where juniper shares the billing rather than occupying it alone, and the choice of botanicals makes that plain: none of them is chasing an effect, each has an audible job. That restraint is also easy to break when it comes to mixing. Chill the highball first, drop in a large ice sphere, pour 5 cl and top with 15 cl of East Imperial Yuzu Tonic - the yuzu extends the citrus already present without covering the perilla or the tea, which any sweeter mixer would erase outright. Finish with a fine strip of yuzu zest, oils expressed over the rim. Fever-Tree Mediterranean keeps things drier still, and Fentimans Oriental Yuzu pushes the citrus further if that is the direction you want. It is dry enough to hold its own in a Martini, where the cypress and the tea come through with nothing to hide behind.