This gin starts somewhere most don't: with jasmine rice grown in the Mississippi Delta, fermented using a method borrowed from sake making, which gives the botanicals a clean base to build on. Two of the ten botanicals, Southern pine needles and red clover, are picked straight from the distillery grounds in Taylor, eight minutes south of Oxford. That's about as local as gin gets. Each botanical is distilled separately and then blended, a slower, more deliberate approach that gives Meyer lemon peel, Tellicherry pepper, lemongrass, rosemary and bay room to show up alongside the juniper. Wonderbird, North Mississippi's first distillery, launched in spring 2019, and No. 61 is its flagship. It shines in a martini, and it's polished enough at 90 proof to sip neat with a citrus twist. The producer also likes it in a French 75. If you think of gin as a juniper delivery system, this is a good bottle to change your mind.