Mandatory in gin
Juniper
Without juniper, gin isn't gin. The blue-black berry of the juniper shrub Juniperus communis gives the spirit both its name and its resinous, spicy backbone. EU law requires that juniper remain recognizable in flavor — everything else is simply built around it.
What is the juniper berry, botanically speaking?
Juniper isn't actually a true berry at all, but a female cone, botanically related to pine and spruce. The shrub Juniperus communis grows wild across large parts of Europe, Northern Asia and North America, often on barren slopes and heathland where little else thrives. It takes two to three years for the green cones to ripen into the dark blue fruit that distillers use for gin. This long ripening cycle explains why a single shrub carries both ripe and unripe fruit at the same time — a fact that makes harvesting laborious and keeps hand-picking essential to this day.