Sencha and Chinese green tea are not the same leaf. Sencha is steamed, which keeps it grassy and marine; Chinese green tea is usually pan-fired, which turns it nuttier and rounder, and using both means the tea note in this gin has two different registers rather than one. Beefeater builds them into a London Dry at 45%.

Tea in a gin is easy to lose and easy to overdo, and here it is used for lift rather than for flavour you could name blind. What it adds is dryness and length: a fine astringency that stretches the finish well past where the citrus stops. Grapefruit peel is the other addition to the house base, and it supplies a bitterness that lemon and orange peel between them do not, sharpening the top of the aroma considerably. Underneath, the classical Beefeater structure is intact. Juniper leads, coriander seed adds warm spice, angelica root and angelica seed both appear, almond lays a dry marzipan weight low down, and liquorice and orris root bind the whole and extend the close.

The nose is juniper, grapefruit, lemon and orange peel with a refined tea freshness behind. The palate is crisp and citrus-led, elegant rather than heavy, and the tea does its work in the second half, drying the middle and carrying the finish outward.

Grapefruit and basil together make the serve the producer recommends, and the basil is the interesting half: green and aromatic, it follows the tea rather than the fruit. In a Martini it gives a noticeably brighter drink than the standard bottling, and the tea keeps the finish going long after a conventional dry gin would have stopped. Twelve botanicals in all, two of them leaves rather than seeds, roots or peel, which is not a distinction most gins get to make. It ends citric, dry and long.