Yomeishu has spent decades making a medicinal herb tonic, not gin, and that background shows in how this bottle is put together. Over twenty botanicals, two separate distillation methods, and a plant chosen for its aroma rather than its familiarity: kuromoji, a Japanese shrub used in tea ceremony and traditional medicine long before anyone thought to distil it. Bottled at 47.4%.

The kuromoji is used three ways and each contributes something different. Twigs are distilled directly with the spirit, giving a clean woody freshness. Leaves and branches come through the second method, where botanicals are steeped first and then distilled, which pulls out heavier material the direct route would leave behind. What the shrub gives overall is a green, faintly citric aroma somewhere between rosewood and lemon, distinctive and difficult to compare to anything European. Around it, anise supplies a liquorice thread, hibiscus a tart floral colour, coriander a warm spiced seed, angelica the dry ground beneath, and infused citrus raises the top. Juniper holds the centre. At 47.4% the whole arrangement stays sharply defined, and the balance sits between herbal, floral, citric and lightly spiced without any one of them taking over.

Strength like that carries a full mixer easily. Neutral tonic, a glass properly charged with ice, and an ordinary measure rather than a heavy one. Lemon peel is the practical garnish, and anything woody or green suits the kuromoji better if you can find it. Silver at the World Gin Awards of 2024 for the liquid, and a Grand Prize at the 16th Glass Bottle Award in 2020 for the bottle, which is shaped after the Central Alps. A house that knows plants medicinally approaches a botanical list differently from one that knows them commercially. It closes herbal, woody and clean.