Black tea is the ingredient that pulls this gin away from the obvious. Crosscut Distillery works with botanicals from Northern Ontario at 43% ABV, and around the juniper sit sweet anise, citrus, grapefruit, cinnamon, cloves and that tea, a combination that reaches for depth rather than brightness alone. The name points at a local harvest, and the recipe reads like one: a set of ingredients that belong together seasonally rather than a list assembled for effect.

Citrus opens proceedings with grapefruit leading, pithy and a little bitter rather than sweet, and the general citrus register filling in behind it. Sweet anise arrives next and is the surprise, a soft liquorice-adjacent note that settles mid-tongue and rounds the fruit without sugaring it. Cinnamon and cloves supply the warm end of the spice, cloves darker and cinnamon broader, and the black tea runs underneath everything as a dry tannic floor that gives the finish its grip. Juniper holds the shape throughout, green and clear. The progression runs bright, then aromatic, then warm, and the tea is what stops the drink reading as simply fruity.

A gin with this much going on wants a mixer that adds nothing. Choose a plain tonic, build it on a lot of ice, and finish with grapefruit peel, which follows the leading citrus directly. Orange peel is the alternative if you want the cinnamon and clove brought forward instead. Avoid anything sweetened, since the tea tannin is the first casualty of sugar. It also makes a distinctive Negroni where the anise and the tea both show through the bitterness. Few gins carry a tea note this legibly without turning into a novelty, and the credit belongs to the spice holding the middle together. It ends warm and gently tannic, the spice outlasting the fruit.