Fig, jasmine, rosehip and tonka bean are not what a spiced gin usually reaches for. Cuckoo puts all four in the middle of a recipe whose front half is entirely conventional heat: clove, ginger, cinnamon and Tellicherry black pepper, a named grade of pepper rather than an anonymous one.

The two halves do different jobs. The spices arrive first and arrive hard, clove and pepper especially, and left alone they would make a gin that tastes of mulled wine. Fig and rosehip put flesh and a dry, fruity sweetness under that heat; jasmine lifts it into something floral; tonka bean, which smells of almond, vanilla and hay at once, rounds the whole middle off. Fennel and lemongrass keep a green, aniseed-edged freshness running through, and orange peel opens the finish back out. Juniper holds it all together underneath, where a spiced gin most often loses it. Twelve botanicals in total, and the spiced label undersells them: half the list is not a spice at all.

Brindle Distillery works on a Lancashire farm and draws its water from the artesian aquifer beneath it, which is about as short a supply chain as a distillery can have. Farm distilleries are common enough now; taking the water from under the same field is not. Bottled at 42%, the strength gives the spices somewhere to stand; at a lower degree the clove and the pepper would flatten into a single warm note.

An aromatic tonic is the right partner, since a plain Indian one would set quinine against clove for no good reason. The measure is 4 cl of gin to 10 cl of tonic, ice straight from the freezer, an orange peel and a cinnamon stick. Keep the bottles cold and mix lightly. Use the cinnamon stick whole and leave it: broken, it takes the drink over within a minute.