Cuckoo Spiced Gin

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.

Citrus · Dry · Spicy · Herbal

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 beanTonka beanA South American seed with notes of vanilla, almond and fresh-cut hay.Glossary, 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 tonicAromatic tonicA more bitter tonic, often tinted by Angostura or other bitters. It suits spicy gins.Glossary is the right partner, since a plain Indian one would set quinineQuinineAn alkaloid from cinchona bark that gives tonic its bitterness. The British in India drank it against malaria and added gin: the gin and tonic was born.Glossary 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.