The nutritional value may be debatable, but doesn’t it feel virtuous to drink your veggies? As long as juniper is the primary flavor, gin can contain any accompanying botanicals. These bottles demonstrate some of the creative ways distillers interpret the possibilities with vegetal additions to standard gin elements.

Gin Mare’s sunny Mediterranean flavors include olives, rosemary, thyme, and basil for a sense of place. Due to the low yield of arbequina olives when juiced, up to 33 pounds of olives have to be used per distillation batch. They also add citrus (a custom blend of sweet Seville oranges, bitter Valencia oranges, and lemons), cardamom and coriander along with thyme, basil, rosemary and juniper berries.

Amass Los Angeles Dry Gin adds subtle earthy umami notes to its finish with two kinds of mushrooms. The mushroom savoriness doesn’t announce itself immediately, but the patient sipper/mushroom hunter will be rewarded. This gin is distilled with 29 botanicals that celebrate Los Angeles’s abundant natural terroir and diverse cultural landscape. Other botanicals (all local when possible) include bay, buckthorn, hibiscus, cardamom, cacao, and makrut lime leaf. 

Moletto Gin offers the most veggie-forward flavor profile of this flight with its tomato-rich profile. It begins with two varieties of juniper berry, fresh mountain spring water, and its chief flavor component, the noble tomato. Sure, this ripe, garden-fresh gin is perfect for a Bloody Mary. But think about caprese Negronis, martinis decorated with olives or basil leaves, or chilled straight sips on a sunny day. 

Flight includes:

• Gin Mare Spanish Gin
• Amass Los Angeles Dry Gin
• Moletto Italian Tomato Gin