Most red-fruit gins drop their strength to make room for the fruit, and end up somewhere close to a liqueur. This one holds 43.5%, which is higher than a good deal of unflavoured gin, and that single number governs everything else about how it behaves. Maison Ferrand macerates the berries into the standard Citadelle distillate rather than building a separate recipe around them.

Two of the six fruits are there to stop it turning sweet. Cranberry is sharply acidic and barely sugary at all, rhubarb sour and vegetal with a green edge, and between them they hold a line that raspberry, blackcurrant and blueberry would otherwise cross. Raspberry leads the aroma, bright and unmistakable. Blackcurrant sits deeper and darker beneath it, blueberry rounder and jammier alongside. The palate is generous and full of red berry, but the base gin keeps asserting itself underneath: juniper stays firm and resinous, citrus peel cuts across the top, and the dryness that belongs to the house style never disappears. The finish is clean rather than syrupy, fruit and freshness together.

Fruit at this strength mixes properly instead of merely sweetening a glass. Neutral tonic and a heavily chilled glass let the berries read as berries; ice generously and pour a normal measure. A raspberry works, and so does a twist of lemon. It is the obvious choice for a Bramble, where the blackcurrant meets crème de mûre on its own ground. Adding fruit without dropping the proof is the harder version of this exercise. Six fruits macerated into a finished gin rather than distilled with it also keeps their character intact, which is the reason the raspberry still smells like a raspberry. It ends fruity, tart and dry.