First Light

Salcombe Distilling Co spent years making award winning gin in Devon before pointing the same expertise at a zero alcohol bottle, and First Light is what came out. It is aimed squarely at people who like a proper classic gin and want the botanical weight rather than flavoured water. The base is distilled from Macedonian juniper, ginger and habanero capsicum, then blended with distillates and extracts from more than twenty botanicals in total, among them orange, sage, cardamom, cascarilla bark and lemongrass. Alcohol is removed in a rotary vacuum still, which is how the delicate aromatics survive a process that heat would flatten, and kombucha stabilises the finished liquid. Juniper leads, citrus and ginger follow, and the habanero arrives late as warmth instead of heat. Pour 50ml over ice with 150ml light tonic, an orange slice and a sage leaf. 70cl at 0%, no added sugar, roughly 24 calories a serve.