Amethyst Watermelon Lime

The garden, in high summer.

We keep Amethyst on the shelf because it is distilled, not flavored. Two brothers — Billy and Sean Watterson, with a working whiskey distillery in the Lowcountry of South Carolina — decided the people not drinking deserved the same craft, and brought all of it to a bottle the zero-proof shelf didn't yet have. Botanicals through the still, no sugar at all. That discipline is why they entered the house.

Watermelon Lime is summer in a pour. Ripe watermelon and tangy lime, cool through the middle — and where alcohol's heat would be, a whisper of warmth instead. Nothing sweetened, nothing pretended; the fruit is the distillate's memory of it.

The pour for the hour when the day is at its warmest.

We do not score. We read. The Reading is how the house locates this bottle — four axes, written on the four petals of the mark.

The Reading™

NOSE    ripe

ARC    tangy

WEIGHT    cool

STAY    quietly warm

One to four petals, quiet to pronounced. A Reading is a location, not a grade.

Poured in — the Savage Lowball, over one large rock. Or long, with sparkling water and a wedge of lime.