Ki No Bi Sei

Eleven botanicals split into six groups, each distilled on its own before anything is blended: Base, Citrus, Herbal, Spice, Green Tea, and Fruity and Floral. That is how The Kyoto Distillery works, and at 54.5% ABV the method is easier to hear than it is in the standard bottling. Ki No Bi Sei takes the navy strengthNavy StrengthGin bottled at 57% ABV or more. Royal Navy lore holds that at this strength, gunpowder soaked in gin would still ignite.GlossarySee Navy Strength gins route - 54.5% is the historic Royal Navy figure, not the 57.1% that often gets quoted in its place - and the extra degrees thicken everything rather than sharpen it.

Citrus · Spicy · Herbal · Navy Strength

The roster is the same one the house built its name on. JuniperJuniperThe one compulsory botanical: gin must taste predominantly of juniper. Its "berry" is really a small conifer cone, resinous and peppery.Glossary, orrisOrris rootIris rhizome dried for years, then ground. Powdery and violet-like, it mainly works as a fixative that binds and lengthens the other aromas.Glossary and akamatsu, the Japanese red pine, form the base. Yellow yuzuYuzuA Japanese citrus with an intense scent between mandarin, grapefruit and lemon, and very little juice.Glossary and lemon carry the citrus. Red shiso and bamboo leaves handle the herbal and floral side, ginger and green sansho the spice, and gyokuro from Uji the tea. Rice spirit sits underneath it all, and the blend is married in stainless steel before being brought down with water from Fushimi, the brewing quarter whose soft water made Kyoto sake what it is.

Where the original is delicate, this is broad. Yuzu and lemon arrive first and stay bright even at strength, then akamatsu opens a dry resinousResinousAn aroma reminiscent of pine or fir resin. It is juniper's signature, due to compounds such as pinene.Glossary seam that runs the whole length of the palate. Gyokuro adds green tannin through the middle, shiso a cool edge beside it, and green sansho closes with its numbing citrus-pepper tingle. The mouthfeel is genuinely thick, which is the point of the higher strength here.

It can take a firm tonic without disappearing. One big cube of clear iceClear iceIce without air bubbles, made by slow, directional freezing. Denser, it melts more slowly and dilutes less.Glossary in the glass, 5 cl of gin, 15 cl of Fever-Tree Indian TonicIndian tonicThe classic tonic: sparkling water, bitter quinine and sugar. The name recalls colonial India, where quinine warded off malaria.Glossary: the clean quinineQuinineAn alkaloid from cinchona bark that gives tonic its bitterness. The British in India drank it against malaria and added gin: the gin and tonic was born.Glossary bitterness meets the pine and the pepper without blunting either. Garnish with a thin slice of nashi pear - its quiet sweetness is a better foil to 54.5% than another citrus would be. It also holds its shape in a Martini or a Negroni, where lesser gins are simply outvoted.