Outdoor Enthusiasts: Meet Juniper Ridge

Just take in these three words for a moment: Wilderness Fragrance Distillery.

A wine writer’s surprise – a box arives with something other than wine

Outdoor enthusiasts will love everything about Juniper Ridge – the world’s only wild fragrance company.  Consisting of hikers and backpackers, the 15 person crew of Juniper Ridge distills amazingly aromatic perfumes and colognes from what they discover during their hiking and backpacking adventures; bark, moss, tree trimmings, mushrooms and plants are all used to make their unique and intriguing products. It’s as if they’ve taken the very essence of their adventures and bottled them up for a later date, when the urge of being back at that very trail, during that very moment, arises.  What’s really cool, is that the people involved in creating the Juniper Ridge products handle every step of the process, from beginning to end.

“That process can look pretty ridiculous at times. We go camping. We crawl around in mountain meadows. We smell the wet earth beneath fir trees, and spend whiskey-fueled hours arguing over the scent of a wind sweeping over a glacier.”

Incense that will invoke memories of hiking, camping and the fresh air of the wilderness

Founded in 1998 by Hall Newbegin, a hiker, mushroom-forager and lover of the great outdoors, Hall began bottling nature’s fragrance by harvesting plants while on hikes and then distilling them in his kitchen to create natural fragrances that he would sell at local farmer’s markets in Berkeley and San Francisco.  Now with a total of 15 hiking enthusiasts on board with him at Juniper Ridge, who harvest and distill fragrances alongside Hall, the company has grown but still holds onto its original mission: to make real and pure fragrances from the mountains and the deserts that they love along the West Coast.  And just like the ever-changing characteristics of wine grapes, harvesting plants for fragrances change yearly depending on how the weather patterns were for that particular season (or vintage), as we would say in the world of wine.  Also like with wine, when we can recognize the vintage because it is printed on the label, the crew at Juniper Ridge stamps each fragrance with the harvest number.  Consumers can then look up that harvest number on their website, juniperridge.com, and find photos of the plants that were used in their bottle of fragrance; in addition to, meeting the Juniper Ridge crew who collected the plants for that particular bottle. 

So how does a wine writing gal like myself come across a box filled with the very impressive Juniper Ridge products?  I get into a Twitter conversation about camping in the vineyards of Oregon, and the next thing I know, I’ve got a box of the best smelling fragrances I’ve ever experienced.  In my box of goodies was two Trail Crew Soaps – one Winter Redwood and one Cascade Glacier, two sets of Campfire Incense sticks – one Douglas Fir and one Desert Pinon, and a Yuba River Cabin Spray.

The Trail Crew Soap harvested from Oregon’s Cascade reminded me of a hike taken with my boys at Salt Creek Falls.

The first one I opened to take a whiff of was the Cascade Glacier, of course, rightly assuming that the plants used for this soap had come from Oregon’s back country Cascade mountains.  As an avid lover of the outdoors, I was immediately taken back to a late spring hike along the roaring Salt Creek Falls. Images of the evergreen forest’s towering pines and fir trees immediately entered my mind, and I could almost hear the Falls as I ran to the sink to wash my hands with this thought invoking soap! Who would have thought soap could conjure-up such fabulous images and memories.  Juniper Ridge has, without a doubt, bottled up the essence of the mountains.  And sure enough, there was a harvest number stamped on my bottle so I could discover when, where and who created this most incredible product.

I love the packaging, too.  It fits the rustic yet refined feel of the entire process of getting it from forest to bottle to consumer, and my husband can’t stay away from the Yuba River Cabin Spray – I smell it every time he comes home from work.  He simply can’t resist, he grabs it and let’s the mist of outdoor goodness permeate the air, and there is certainly no complaint from me because I love it as much as he does.  We haven’t tried the incense yet, but it’s on our agenda this coming week. We’re going to light a few before some friends come over for a barbeque dinner.  I have no doubt, they’ll be inquiring about the gorgeous forest aromas in the heart of our family room.

My husband is a true outdoor enthusiast – it’s one of the reasons I married him. He hikes, camps and loves an outdoor adventure. He also absolutely loves this cabin spray

Forget the ties and socks, my friend’s – seriously.  Get him something on Father’s Day  or his birthday that will totally rock his world.  Visit juniperridge.com

*Thanks to @IPNC for introducing me to @Juniper_Ridge