WildGins 101:  From Berry to Bottle –  How We Make WildBark & WildJune Gin

 There’s a magic in transformation — in watching a humble juniper berry metamorphose into a glass of gin that carries the wild heart of Texas. At WildGins, every step from berry to bottle is imbued with intention, terroir, and a deep respect for place. In this post, join me on a behind-the-scenes wander through our gin-making journey, from foraging juniper to bottling your next pour of WildBark or WildJune.

The Wild Harvest: Foraging from our Wild Trees

Our journey begins in the mountains and high plains of West Texas. Much like in our “Back to Classes, Back to Foraging” post, the art of foraging is at the core of what we do — walking through juniper hillsides, listening to the wind, and looking for that juniper that has berries at just the right stage of ripeness.

• Seasonality matters. In autumn and early winter, juniper berries reach peak maturity, concentrated in essential oils and flavor. That’s when we harvest, when the wild junipers offer their richest gifts.
• Finding and Naming our Trees. We’ve got 100s of trees that we forage from, but in any given year, we only forage from those who are bursting with berries. Every tree that we’ve harvested from receives a name. And We name our trees based on her personality, the friends who were present for the harvest, or her very unique location.
• Selective harvest. Once we find our tree with berries at the perfect ripeness, we harvest only about 30-50% of her berries. We pick only the ripest, best-condition berries, leaving enough behind to support wildlife and future growth.
• Rotate Our Trees. We never ask too much of our trees. We give our female trees a break between reproductive seasons (and that is often a 2-3 year interval).

By doing this we root our gin in place. Our wild foraging is also sustainable: we champion habitat stewardship and our annual “give-back to the land” efforts.

Cleaning & Preserving: The First Steps After Harvest

While we forage out in the mountains at a certain time of year, we need to have berries ready for distillation at all times of year. Hence, we clean and preserve them so we’re ready for distillation in the future.

• Cleaning & sorting. We hand-sort to remove any unripe or damaged berries, twigs, or debris. Clean botanicals produce cleaner spirits.
• Rinsing to remove. We remove any ‘bloom’ (which is the white yeast coating that you sometimes find on berries), and rinse to remove any soil or other residue.
• Dehydrate and Vacuum Seal. We then pack in the freshness of this pure juniper goodness and preserve them for months (or years) into the future!

Distillation: The Heart of Transformation

Once we have our Texas Junipers ready for distillation we need to combine them with our other premium botanicals. We feature 5 botanicals in WildBark West Texas Dry (Alligator Juniper, Common Juniper, Orris Root, Coriander, Orange Peel) and 11 botanicals in WildJune Western Style Gin (Redberry Juniper, Common Juniper, Angelica Root, Cinnamon, Orange Peel, Lemon Peel, Hops, Lemon balm, Orris Root, and White Pepper). And we are just as picky about our other botanicals as we are about our Texas Junipers. Whenever possible we purchase organic ingredients,

After we have our unique set of botanicals, we’re on to distillation. Distillation is where chemistry meets craft. This is where we turn macerated botanicals into the clean, vibrant gin that ends up in your glass.

• Buying Organic Botanicals (whenever possible). We are as picky about our other botanicals (5 in WildBark, 11 in WildJune) as we are about our Texas Junipers. We order organic whenever we can.
• Crushing or lightly milling. We lightly crush our berries and our other organic botanicals just enough to release the internal oils, without pulverizing them.
• We combine steeping with redistillation. We steep our botanicals in our artisinal grain spirit for a carefully calibrated period, and then redistill this product. This helps extract the aromatic compounds, oils, and complexity that will carry through to the final gin.
• Cut points. We carefully monitor the heads, hearts, and tails — only the “heart” fraction makes the cut. That’s where the delicate balance of juniper, citrus, and herbal nuance lives.

By the end of distillation, we have a high-proof, intensely aromatic gin base, full of character and ready for final refinement.

Blending & Proofing: Balancing the Wild

After distillation comes the art of balance — taking bold, raw spirit and turning it into something drinkable, expressive, and true to WildGins.

• Water sourcing. We use clean, reverse-osmosis water to bring the spirit down to bottling strength. The quality of water matters: minerals, pH, and purity all affect mouthfeel and flavor.
• Resting & Marrying. Once diluted, we allow the gin to rest (or “marry”) for a period of a month, letting flavors mingle, mellow, and integrate.

The result? A beautifully balanced Texas gin that remains expressive of juniper, bark, botanicals, and place.

Bottling & Labeling: Respecting Every Tree

From berry to bottle, we treat every tree and every drop as precious.

• Small batches from single trees. We bottle in small batches with all the junipers for that batch coming from an individual Wild Texas Juniper Tree.
• Honor our trees with their names on our bottles. We put the name of that tree on our side labels. Since we don’t harm the tree in the process, you can revisit her fruits in subsequent years and batches.
• Single Origin Gin. Our approach to doing single-distillation batches using juniper berries from a single tree makes us a single-origin gin with hyper-Texas-Terroir!

Once sealed, each bottle is ready to travel from our wild hills to your home bar.

Two Twinned Expressions: WildBark vs. WildJune

Though they share a production pathway, WildBark and WildJune each express a distinct spirit of place.

WildBark featuring the Alligator Juniper which is the tallest, biggest, grandest of all Texas Junipers leans bolder, crisp, and juniper-forward — a gin that embraces the forest.

WildJune featuring the Redberry Juniper—a truly uniquely Texas juniper that doesn’t grow in any other US state—has a sweetness to her with a brighter, floral lift, and a more complex bouquet of botanicals.

You can read more about how these two differ in our Our Products page, where we go deeper on their tasting notes, pairings, and recommended cocktails.