Wembley Peach Gin

A peach gin is usually a sweetened one. This one is redistilled instead: peach, juniper and aromatic herbs go through a traditional still together, so the fruit arrives as aroma rather than as syrup, and the pale orange colour in the bottle comes from the process rather than from anything added at the end. The difference shows on the second glass, where a sweetened gin turns cloying and this one does not.

Floral · Fruity · Herbal

Working peach this way is difficult. Its aroma is delicate and mostly volatile, which is why so many producers give up and use a liqueur base; distilled, what survives is the perfumed, slightly almond-edged side of the fruit rather than its flesh. Redistilling also means nothing is stirred in afterwards to hold that flavour in place. Juniper stays fresh underneath and gives the gin something to be, and the aromatic herbs add a discreet green accent that stops the peach from reading as confectionery. The base is the house London DryLondon DryA style, not a place of origin: every flavour comes from distilling natural botanicals. After distillation only water and a trace of sugar may be added, with no flavouring or colouring.GlossarySee London Dry gins, so the juniper was in place long before the peach arrived. The producer describes ripe peach, fresh juniper and those quiet herbal notes, closing on a fragrant fruity finish.

The strength is 37.5%, which is exactly the legal minimum for gin in the European Union. That is worth knowing rather than holding against it: at the floor of the category, a fruit-led bottle stays light enough to drink in quantity on a warm evening, and the Romanian house behind it built this on its own London Dry base rather than on a neutral one.

An Indian tonicIndian tonicThe classic tonic: sparkling water, bitter quinine and sugar. The name recalls colonial India, where quinine warded off malaria.Glossary is enough. Four centilitres, then ten of tonic over firm ice, with a slice of fresh peach laid across the top. Everything cold, mixed lightly. Use fresh fruit and not tinned, and cut the slice thick: a thin one collapses into the drink within a couple of minutes.