Hamagou is a beach shrub, and its flowers open along the shoreline of Miyajima, the island off Hiroshima that gives this release its subject. SAKURAO takes that plant as the centre of a 2025 limited edition, adds rosemary, vanilla bean, caraway seed and shiranui citrus around it, and bottles at 47%, a strength high enough to carry a fragile botanical without losing it.

The hamagou is fresh and herbal rather than sweetly floral, which is what its coastal habitat would suggest, and it occupies the upper register with a clean green lift. Rosemary works directly alongside it, resinous and dry, and that pairing is the central decision of the recipe: two aromatic plants, one from the shore and one from the hillside, occupying the same register without duplicating each other. Shiranui adds the citrus, a Japanese variety that is sweeter and less acidic than most, and it occupies the middle where a sharper fruit would have cut. Caraway seed brings a warm, faintly aniseed spice underneath, and vanilla bean is the softener, laying a creamy weight at the base that keeps the herbs from drying the palate out entirely. Juniper holds a green line through all of it, and 47% keeps everything defined.

Strength like this survives a long drink better than most. A neutral tonic and a glass properly loaded with ice will do, and the pour can be generous. Rosemary in a sprig stays nearest the recipe, and a wedge of some sweeter citrus is the alternative pointing at the shiranui. Avoid anything sweetened, which would smother the herbs. A gin named after a shoreline plant most people have never seen is worth a glass undiluted first. Naming a limited edition after one plant commits the whole recipe to it, and everything else on it is arranged accordingly. It closes herbal, citric and warm.