- The herbs, spices, fruit, vegetables, flowers, or other flavoring ingredients that are used to flavor spirits, most commonly gin. Delicate botanicals are often introduced to the spirit using a gin basket, which allows the vapors of the spirit to mingle with the aromatic compounds of the herbs and spices during the process of distillation. Sturdier botanicals are frequently infused directly in the spirit itself prior to redistillation.
Common botanicals include: juniper berry, coriander, citrus peel, angelica root, anise, elderflower, oris root, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cucumber, but there are few restrictions and many distillers create recipes with nontraditional botanicals not listed here.