Siegfried - Easy Juicy Berry

Raspberry and cherry are the two fruits named in this German recipe, and the drink is built around what they do to juniper rather than around hiding it. Easy and juicy is the promise on the label, and the botanical list is short enough to keep it. Nothing on it is decorative.

Citrus · Floral · Fruity · Herbal

Raspberry is the sharper of the pair. It arrives with acidity attached, tart before it is sweet, and its aroma is more perfumed than its flavour, which is why it works in a distillate instead of collapsing into jam. Cherry sits deeper and rounder, stone-fruit sweetness with a faint almond edge behind it, and it fills the middle where raspberry only decorates the top. Distilled fruit rarely keeps both halves of what it tastes like, and these two were picked for the halves that survive the still.

Orange is the third fruit and the one doing structural work: it widens the fruit into citrus, keeps the acidity honest and stops the berries from reading as syrup. Lime flower is the surprise, a soft honeyed blossom note with a green herbal thread through it, cooling rather than sweet, the reason the finish lifts instead of settling. Juniper anchors the base, resinousResinousAn aroma reminiscent of pine or fir resin. It is juniper's signature, due to compounds such as pinene.Glossary and dry, present enough to hold the fruit in check. Five botanicals only, a short list where each one does something the others cannot.

Fruity and floral at the front, citrus through the middle, dry at the end. It is made for long, cold, uncomplicated drinking: a neutral tonic, a generous fill of ice, and two or three fresh raspberries or a wide orange peel. Lemonade and soda both work if you would rather taste the fruit than the juniper. Cold is a requirement rather than a preference here: warm, the berry turns heavy and the lime flower is the first thing to go.