You would think, after years of gin - gin baubles, gin subscriptions, gin bars, flavoured gins, sparkling gins, gin slogans on cushions, gin slogans on pyjamas, a nation crying tears made of gin - that people would be sick to the back teeth of the stuff.
But Manchester Gin would beg to differ, for they've gone and opened a new gin bar, gin school and a restaurant inspired by gin, all under one roof on Watson Street.
With humble beginnings right here in the city, the story goes that boy (Seb Heeley) met girl (Jen Wiggins) over a gin and tonic. Fast forward several years and they're distilling their own version of the spirit in their Chorlton dining room.
Fast forward a few more and you'll find yourself here, at the Spirit of Manchester distillery, where one copper still alone is capable of producing one million litres of gin per year.
It's an awesome setting, a series of six curved brick archways - only three of which are open to the public, the others are office and kitchen space - that entice you to crane your neck skywards.
I'm here to investigate that restaurant, Three Little Words, which sits to one side of the bar and is guarded by a huge copper bee - a replica of the one Manchester Gin commissioned for the Bee in the City statue trail.
This particular arch has been given a smart fit-out, in a kind of paint-by-numbers hotel-lobby way, all blue and purple velvet seats and white marble and a huge living wall of plants lit up too brightly. It's inoffensive but nothing you haven't seen before - Eden, Mamucium and Banyan all spring to mind.
When I arrive, a staff member comes to open the door for me, greets me with a warm smile... and then walks right past into the street and vanishes into the night without another word.
Let’s try again - I go up the bar and say I have a reservation, and this time I manage to keep hold of a staff member long enough to be shown into the dining room.
The menu of small and large plates (you might know them as starters and mains) is apparently inspired by the botanicals used in Manchester Gin, though I sincerely hope no one’s tried whacking a pickled onion or a lump of pork belly in a still with the juniper berries.
The cocktail menu is much more obviously gin-focused, a complex list of Manchester music and love-inspired cocktails (including one called Grounds For Divorce) that usually feature some sort of Manchester Gin in the ingredients list.
Our waiter seems reluctant to let us order from it though, suggesting a simple gin and tonic or perhaps a classic negroni.
I ignore him, and order a This Charming Man, a blend of gin, grapefruit, tonka syrup, apricot and chocolate bitters (£9) that's described in the menu as bittersweet, complex and vivid.
Vivid I can detect, but the bitter's gone awry and it's so sweet it's about as complex as a bag of sugar. Maybe a negroni would have been a better shout.
On to the food then, and our waiter again seems keen to strip away our autonomous thought by painstakingly building our meal, complete with lengthy descriptions of each dish, before we've even had a chance to scan the menu.
It's a lovely level of service and would be incredibly helpful in, say, a fine dining restaurant with unfamiliar ingredients and techniques, but this isn't that. We know what halloumi is.
The lamb's fry (£7.50) is the drinking snack of our wildest dreams, the earthy and flavoursome offal shaped into a sphere, breadcrumbed, and deep-fried to resemble a Scotch egg. It's presented with some stiff strips of bacon and a hearty paprika aioli which are both welcome, helping to cut through the richness.
Then there's the grilled halloumi with peach and basil (£6.50), a huge slab of cheese scored into a chequerboard then grilled. Parts of it are dense and chewy while others are dry and crunchy, its surface so unevenly cooked it resembles the coat of a Friesian cow.
The peach and basil salad underneath is mulchy, like a fruit salad that’s sat forgotten in the office fridge while everyone’s cleared off for a bank holiday weekend, but it does its damnedest to make its voice heard above the salt.
For our first large plate (main), we order the hake with garlic new potatoes and tenderstem broccoli (£14), which arrives in what first appears to be filo pastry but is in fact, much to our disappointment, greaseproof paper. It's presentation we've all seen 100 times before, usually on an episode of Come Dine With Me.
The hake inside is tough and dry, wedges of lemon lying limply on its surface imparting very little favour, and there's not a trace of garlic flavour to be found on the garlic new poatoes. When our waiter clears away the plates, he says: "It's a bit bland for me, that one." He's not wrong.
The pork belly is miles better, its crispy skin snapping audibly and giving way to a perfectly fatty cut of meat beneath. It's swimming in a rich broth and served with some charred fennel.
There's also an excellent side of sweet potato, its lurid orange flesh generously laced with butter and sage before being topped with crispy sweet potato crisps. Sensational, but £6 for half a spud is quite a sting.
The dessert menu is much less fussy, with a Manchester tart, a sticky toffee pudding and even a knickerbocker glory all making the cut.
We share a blondie (£6) which is nutty and hefty, a subtle liquorice ice cream keeping it on the right side of sickly.
It's a meal of two halves, and we've clearly ordered wrongly in places despite bowing down to the passively pushy service.
What Three Little Words is doing really well is the simple, familiar plates cooked properly - pub food, elevated for the gin generation.
It just needs to stop bowing down to the small plates brigade.
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