Ben Lomond Blackberry & Gooseberry Gin

This is not a new recipe. Ben Lomond Blackberry & Gooseberry is the distillery's Original 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 with natural blackberry and gooseberry essences worked into it, which means the juniper, coriander and angelica structure underneath is unchanged and still doing its job.

Dry · Fruity · Herbal

The two fruits were chosen for contrast rather than for agreement. Gooseberry is tart, green and almost savoury, a fruit that stays sharp even when ripe. Blackberry is the opposite: dark, soft, closer to jam than to acid. Put together they give a gin that opens tart and finishes rounder, with the gooseberry on the attack and the blackberry filling in behind it. Coriander adds its citrus lift over the top, angelica rootAngelicaThe root of a tall umbellifer, earthy and musky. After juniper and coriander it is the most common botanical: it binds the aromas and holds the finish.Glossary keeps a dry earthy floor, and juniper stays aromatic through the middle rather than being buried. A faint note of red liquorice turns up at the end, which is a common trace when berry and juniper are held together. Essence is the honest word for what goes in, and it explains why the fruit reads clean rather than jammy.

At 38% this sits below a standard dry ginDry ginGin with no perceptible sweetness: in the European Union, the word "dry" allows at most 0.1 g of sugar per litre.GlossarySee Dry gin gins and above a liqueur, and the strength is part of the design: a fruit gin bottled at 43% would be sharp, and at 30% it would be syrup. What you get instead is something drinkable long, without the sugar load that the fruit-gin category usually carries. Flavoured ginFlavoured ginGin with flavourings, often fruity, added after distillation. It may be coloured and lightly sweetened.GlossarySee Flavoured gin gins covers everything from a bottle like this one to spirits that are mostly syrup, and the figure on the label is the quickest way to tell them apart.

An Indian tonicIndian tonicThe classic tonic: sparkling water, bitter quinine and sugar. The name recalls colonial India, where quinine warded off malaria.Glossary keeps it dry. Use 4 cl and lengthen with 10 cl of tonic over ice that holds, with one blackberry and one gooseberry. Everything cold, a single turn of the spoon. Both fruits go in whole and uncrushed, so they perfume the top of the drink without clouding it.