Dicky Bird - Pepper & Pear

Pear and pepper is a pairing that has worked on a cheeseboard for far longer than it has worked in a still, and this flavoured ginFlavoured ginGin with flavourings, often fruity, added after distillation. It may be coloured and lightly sweetened.GlossarySee Flavoured gin gins takes it at face value. Juniper, pear and pepper are the whole recipe at 40% ABV, which leaves each of the three fully exposed and gives the bottle nowhere to hide behind a long botanical list.

Spicy · Fruity

Pear arrives first, unmistakably the fresh fruit and never a syrup: juicy, crisp, carrying the slightly grainy sweetness that a genuinely ripe pear has and a flavouring never manages. Pepper follows almost immediately and carries the more interesting half of the idea, warm and aromatic rather than hot, arriving as a dry prickle midway across the tongue that stops the fruit settling into sweetness. A green resinousResinousAn aroma reminiscent of pine or fir resin. It is juniper's signature, due to compounds such as pinene.Glossary line of juniper runs beneath both of them, and it is far more audible here than in most flavoured gins, simply because nothing else is competing for the space it occupies.

The palate moves from juicy to warm to dry, and the pepper is what remains once the fruit has gone, which is the reverse of what most fruit gins do.

Three ingredients in the bottle call for an equally bare drink. A neutral tonic keeps the pear legible, while anything sweetened turns it into fruit squash and buries the pepper entirely. Pack the glass with ice, then settle on one garnish: a thin slice of fresh pear restates the fruit, while a few cracked peppercorns push the spice forward instead. Both at once is unnecessary. It also performs well in a sour, the pepper giving the drink an edge that fruit alone never would. Recipes this short succeed or fail on whether the ingredients were worth choosing, and these two were. It ends dry and gently peppery, the fruit long gone by then.