Yarrow and meadowsweet are European hedgerow plants, the sort a herbalist would have picked within walking distance, and they are here in a bottle named after the Amazon. That contradiction is the most interesting thing about the recipe: the exotic material arrives unnamed, while the plants doing the identifiable work grow in temperate meadows. Hendrick's bottles it at 40%.

The Amazonian flora is the headline and it is deliberately unspecified, contributing a green, tropical brightness that sits above everything without resolving into a single flavour you could point at. Underneath it the European plants are precise. Yarrow is dry, bitter and slightly medicinal, closer to a herb than to a flower despite the way it looks. Meadowsweet is its opposite, sweetly floral with an almond-adjacent softness, and between them they cover both ends of the herbal range. Chamomile and elderflower fill the middle with gentler floral material, one faintly apple-like, the other honeyed. Cubeb berries bring a peppery heat with a pine edge that lets them work alongside the juniper rather than against it. Caraway seed adds a warm aniseed note, coriander a citric spice, and angelica root the dry earth beneath. The finish turns woody, which the floral opening gives no warning of.

Layered like this, it needs a mixer with no opinion of its own. A neutral tonic over plenty of ice, poured generously, and nothing sweetened, which would flatten the herbal side immediately. A strip of grapefruit peel suits the bitterness of the yarrow; a sprig of something green is the alternative. Undiluted and lightly chilled, the meadowsweet is easiest to find. Naming a gin after a rainforest and then building it on meadow plants is a strange decision that works. It closes floral, herbal and woody.