CleanCo Clean V (700 mL)

Spencer Matthews started CleanCo in November 2019, after deciding his own drinking was not doing him any favors and finding that the alternatives on offer were either sweet or sanctimonious. The brief was neither: something you could pour into the same glass, in front of the same people, without explaining yourself.

Where most of the category picks one spirit and does it well, CleanCo went wide early — gin, rhubarb gin, vodka, tequila, rum and whiskey — and became the first to cover the full back bar rather than a corner of it.

The work has gone into texture as much as taste. The usual complaint about a spirit with nothing in it is that it feels thin, and most of what CleanCo has been doing since is closing that gap.