An olive is a fruit, and it is a fruit almost nobody distils. O'live BV takes green olives from the Alpilles in Provence, adds the herbs that grow on the same hillsides, and puts them beside juniper in a fully distilled gin, which means the character comes out of the still rather than from anything added afterwards.

What the olive gives is texture before flavour. The palate is noticeably oily, smooth in a way that coats rather than cuts, and that mouthfeel is what sets this apart from any other bottle before flavour does. The flavour follows: fresh green olive, savoury and faintly saline, with a warm bitterness underneath that never becomes harsh. Juniper works directly against it, piney and resinous, and the two make an unlikely but stable pair, one soft and one sharp. The Provençal herbs fill the space between them, dry and aromatic as only sun-grown plants manage to be, and they push the whole thing toward the savoury end of the category. Subtle citrus hints lift the top. There is a lightness to the olive freshness that stops the oiliness from becoming heavy, and the balance between those two is where the recipe succeeds.

Savoury gins want savoury company. A neutral tonic works, and a Martini works better, since an olive gin garnished with an olive is a rare case of a cliché being correct. Use a proper amount of ice and skip anything sweetened, which would fight the bitterness directly. Neat and lightly chilled shows the oily texture most plainly. Michelin-starred kitchens across Europe pour it, and that tells you where it belongs: near food rather than beside a cocktail list. Distilling a fruit that most people only ever eat with salt is a decision nothing else on the shelf prepares you for. It closes savoury, herbal and warm.