Ginepraio

"Ginepraio" has a double meaning in Tuscany: It is, literally, the word for "juniper thicket," but it is also, colloquially, a term used to describe a tricky, thorny situation.

Levante Spirits, producer of Ginepraio, is based in Ponsacco, Tuscany, in the province of Pisa. Both the company name and the gins themselves are Mediterranean-inspired, evoking the scents of the aromatic scrub-brush, or macchia, of the Italian coast.

Tuscany, and especially the Val Tiberina (a mountainous stretch of the Tiber River Valley that connects Romagna, Tuscany, and Umbria), is considered the greatest juniper "terroir" in the world. It's a point of pride for many of the greatest British gin producers, including Bombay Sapphire, that they source their juniper from Tuscany. Ginepraio co-founder Enzo Brini, whose family owns the Il Conventino wine estate in Montepulciano, took a terroir-driven approach when creating the recipes for Ginepraio: three different types of organically grown juniper, sourced from three distinct terroirs within Tuscany, form the heart of the Ginepraio formula.