Animus Distillery Arboretum Gin

Animus Distillery Arboretum Gin is a savoury, herb-driven gin from the Macedon Ranges.

Savoury is the point. Strawberry gum leaf brings floral and menthol tones, native bush tomato reads like tamarillo, rosemary and bay build herbal depth, and orange, both zest and flesh, rounds the palate out. Sarsaparilla, mountain pepperberry, capsicum, lemon thyme, cardamom, angelica, clove, star anise, turmeric and lemon myrtle fill in the middle, while juniper, coriander seed and citrus keep it recognisably a gin. Most of the Australian material is grown in the garden at the Kyneton distillery and picked on the day it goes into the still, which is where the sappy, resinous quality comes from.

Resinous and spicy with a green, almost eucalypt edge, and silky enough to sip neat over ice. In a drink it wants something savoury alongside: tonic with a rosemary sprig, a dirty Martini, a Gibson. Bartenders tend to treat it as a canvas.