Greetings Y'all,
We are Thrilled to share with you the article written by Tara Jones appearing this week in Dmagazine featuring how our gins are so uniquely Texan!
From Berry To Bottle
That's right, we really do gather the berries from individual trees to do single distillation batches from specific trees. We name all the trees from which we gather berries and then honor those trees by putting their name on our side label. People often ask me where the names come from, and it is usually a combination of the tree's personality (I mean, check out Fertile Myrtle from our Our Trees page on our website and you'll see what I mean), and the friends who helped me forage these berries. For instance, Em's Delight is one of the current offerings of WildBark West Texas Dry Gin on many shelves in your local retail store. And her name comes from the delightful Emily (pictured below on the right). She and her father are friends of mine in the Davis Mountains, and they invited me over to forage the Alligator junipers from one of their gorgeous trees on their property. So of course, the tree just had to be named Em's Delight!
As you can see from above, these are not your average Junipers. These are Texas Junipers, and they are Texas-sized. The Alligator Juniper is the largest of all 8 species of junipers found in Texas. They dwarf the typical Common Juniper 'shrub' found in Europe, as well as the not-allergy-friendly Ashe Juniper that is the source of cedar fever for many who live in Central Texas. No, these beauties are big, bold, and beautiful. And as you can imagine from the photo, they have plenty of berries. One year, I collected nearly 50 lbs of juniper berries from Fertile Myrtle, and she still had more than 50% of her berries on her branches. I usually forage between 10 and 20 lbs of juniper per tree, and the trees retain the vast majority of their berries after that. And, of course, I always thank the trees while I'm foraging.
I love that my trees out in West Texas are all so different. Some have been around for centuries (like Em's Delight, who is probably close to 200 years old), and others are young and on the spry side of life. They also occupy different microhabitats with different microclimates. This gives them each unique flavors. Star Child (featured on a batch from 2023, see above) resides near the McDonald's Observatory. Hence the name. The rains fall differently on all sides of the mountain, and Star Child had plenty of rain the previous year to produce a banner crop of berries. Since each tree takes about 2 years to produce a crop of juniper berries, I've gotten to know my 'odd' year and 'even' year girls. (Only female juniper trees produce berries.) Some day, I might even get around to putting name plaques on these trees, but for now, I honor them by putting their names on our bottles of WildBark West Texas Dry and WildJune Western Style Gin. I invite you to go find your favorite 'Juniper Gal' by starting your own collection of our gins at home!
If all of this sounds like your kind of fun, and you happen to work at a restaurant or bar that serves my gin...Then I invite you to consider entering our Summer Cocktail Competition! I'm treating the creators of the top 10 selling WildGins Cocktails this summer to a foraging trip out to the Davis Mountains in October (5th-7th). It's easy to enter the contest, and we're running it through September 15th. So there is plenty of time to get a WildGins cocktail on your menu and selling. Feel free to email me if you are interested or have any questions about this contest!