Eleven botanicals go into this gin and they do not all enter the same way. Eight are steeped in the spirit; the other three are held above it and infused by vapour as the alcohol rises through them, which extracts delicate material that soaking would have flattened. Jawbox works in copper pot stills on a three-hundred-acre estate near Belfast, triple-distils, and bottles at 43%.

Splitting the method that way is a decision about which botanicals can take heat and which cannot. The robust ones, juniper and coriander and the roots, reward steeping, and they arrive first: a bold nose of juniper and coriander that announces the London Dry classification without hesitation. The fragile ones are the reason for the vapour basket, and Black Mountain heather is chief among them, a local plant with a dry, honeyed floral note that direct maceration would have turned bitter. On the palate the order is deliberate. Citrus comes first from lemon peel, then pepper from cubebs and grains of paradise, then the root notes from angelica, orris and liquorice, quiet but structural. Cassia quills add dry warmth, cardamom a cooling lift. Juniper and pine return at the end and stay there.

Awards have followed, including a gold at the CLASS Bartenders' Brand Awards and the Quality Drinks Award for Best Gin, and the bar trade tends to reward gins that behave predictably in a mix. Reach for a neutral tonic, chill the glass through with ice, and use lemon peel, which repeats the recipe. A Martini suits it equally well. Triple distillation and a split infusion is more work than a classic recipe requires, and the clarity is where it shows. Two of those three vapour botanicals could have been steeped without anyone noticing; the heather could not. It closes piney, peppery and dry.