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Craft Spirits Magazine July/August 2024

Foraged Flavors —

Distillers are embracing hand-foraged ingredients to create unique, regionally-inspired spirits.

Words by Ruvani de Silva

A combination of increased environmental awareness, a desire to source locally, and an emphasis on quality and small-batch production are becoming increasingly important to consumers and producers across the beverage and food sectors. This is leading a new trend in spirits production: the use of foraged ingredients. While terroir has always been important in the spirits world, the incorporation of hyper-local, hand-foraged ingredients in spirits as varied as gin, whiskey, vodka, amaro and absinthe is bringing a new dimension to regionally focused small-batch distilling. Distillers are using their love of the outdoors and passion for nature to create new, experimental recipes using wild hand-picked plants to offer drinkers a taste of local land and differentiate their product and identity.

In the remote Davis Mountains of West Texas, biologist and gin maker Molly Cummings spends seasonal weekends foraging rare alligator and red berry junipers, native only to this region, to make the two varieties of her WildGins brand, WildBark and WildJune. A professor at the University of Texas, Cummings became intrigued when she learned that 98% of gins are made solely from the common European juniper, but that Texas boasts eight varieties all of its own, and made it her mission to find the ones that made the best gin. “I was on a quest to see what Texas had to offer,” she says. Cummings’ knowledge and perseverance paid off, and her unique, flavorsome gins are now staples at bars and restaurants around the Lone Star State and sold at most major Texas liquor stores. Cummings says she’s the only gin maker in the world to use these berries, all of which she forages by hand on private land whose owners she has formed close relationships with in her 10-plus years of visiting the Davis Mountains in search of juniper.

“The attraction of foraging is that it really brings a local tie to what you’re eating and drinking,” says Cummings. “By foraging local juniper varietals, I really get to Texify the heart of my gin—to take something that’s typically European and transform it to something Texan, highlighting our regional terroir.” While many Texans might not make it out to the wilds of the Davis Mountains, whose dramatic peaks and crags were formed by 35-million-year-old volcanic magma, they can sip on a bright, sweet-tart cranberry-pomegranate-esque WildJune or dry, earthy aromatic piney-herb WildBark and imbibe the rich, varied landscape of rural West Texas.

In Coram, Montana, nestled between Flathead National Forest and Glacier National Park, Glacier Distilling Co. has been making small-batch foraged spirits and liqueurs since 2012. “Most everyone at Glacier Distilling was a forager in some manner before they started [here],” says Nate Conners, director of sales and marketing. “From picking wild huckleberries on hikes to foraging for morel mushrooms in the springtime, foraging is embedded into the Montana ethos and the experience of spending time outdoors in the mountains.”

Glacier uses wild, hand picked huckleberries in its Bearproof Huckleberry Whiskey, Huckleberry Liqueur and Huckleberry Gin; foraged wormwood in its Trail of the Cedars absinthe; and foraged wild spruce tips in its gin. “We are lucky to have so many resources that are quite literally just outside our back door,” says Conners, “Being able to incorporate these local ingredients in a sustainable manner really helps to set our products apart from other, mass-produced spirits.”

Two time zones to the east in Asheville, North Carolina, Eda Rhyne Distilling Co. applies a holistic philosophy to its production process and uses heirloom grains to make some of the most innovative American herb-based spirits. Appalachian Fernet, Amaro Oscura, Amaro Flora and Pinnix Gin all include locally foraged ingredients, including spicebush leaves and berries, angelica root, mountain mint, chicory, dandelion root, bee balm, sumac and spruce and hemlock tips. “Everything that we make is chosen because we really like the flavor, the history, and the process. There is also a mystery and almost mysticism of these products that we think is really cool,” says president Rett Murphy.

Combining farming experience, folk knowledge and relationships with local landowners, Murphy and co-owner Chris Bowen have crafted a range of liqueurs that riff off traditional Italian styles but capture the essence of the Appalachian Mountains. Murphy is keen to highlight the roots of many of Eda Rhyne’s ingredients in folk medicine and culture.

“Dandelion root is really good for increasing liver function, aiding in digestion and fighting general inflammation, while chicory root is anti-diabetic, antioxidant and prebiotic,” he says. “Sumac is good for blood sugar and general heart health, also very high in vitamins A and C, while bee balm is good for indigestion, and for combatting infections and cold and flu symptoms.”

This in-depth knowledge of local ingredients is key to Eda Rhyne’s identity. “Our use of these plants is one way that we are connecting with this place that is our home,” says Murphy.

Portland’s Freeland Spirits is a woman-owned company whose gin includes oxalis, salal berries, chanterelle mushrooms and nettle, all foraged locally. “Our Forest Gin is inspired by a walk in the woods, and we wanted to highlight ingredients from the woods as much as possible,” says master distiller and partner Molly Troupe, “And anytime you can get a team together and field trip into the woods is a mental health day win.”

This consciousness of escape and mental space is a major driver for distillers to forage. At WildGins, Cummings makes a similar point. “There is an undeniable satisfaction of being connected with nature and making the connection between the plant and the bottle—there’s a thrill to it—especially when compared to a typical day job stuck with a computer—this is the antithesis. We can be connected to trees and fresh air.”