Annual Juniper Harvest

Every bottle of Suncliffe Gin starts here, in the high desert scrub of Sedona. Hands in juniper trees, busily filling buckets in the dry morning air. This spring, we did something we'd been meaning to do for a while: instead of foraging quietly on our own, we invited some of our favorite bartenders from Phoenix out to see where it all begins.

Our group descended on Red Rock Crossing on a perfect Sedona morning. The work looks simple but demands attention. You weave among the trees, navigating uneven ground and the occasional cactus hiding in the skirts of the junipers, coaxing berries off branches by hand. Everyone fell into their own rhythm, trading notes on the three native junipers we harvest: one-seed, alligator, shaggy bark, and what each one brings to the gin. Within the first hour we had 30 lbs.

From Red Rock Crossing we moved to Yavapai Vista where hikers kept stopping to ask what we were doing. The bartenders started explaining it to them in real time, about the foraging, the botanicals, the story. That felt like exactly the point: this isn't just our story to tell anymore.

We ended the day at Suncliffe Drive, our namesake street, where we foraged for the very first time back in 2020. Everyone did a lay-back shot under the sign, then lunched together for as long as anyone wanted to stay. People arrived as colleagues and strangers and left as something closer to friends. That's the kind of day we want to keep having.