Huckleberry Spruce Tip is handpicked from the wild and captured in our drink syrup for cocktails, tea, lemonades, zero proof drink recipes, and more. For reasons we will get into, we make only one batch each year, and it goes to our #CocktailFarmClub, (the cutoff this year is May 20th to get this special release sent to your door.)
Sweet, sour and elusive, the huckleberry is a PNW native gem. Foraging huckleberries has been a tradition in our family for generations. With the added acidity of blue spruce, harvested by PNW natives for hundreds of years, Huckleberry-Spruce tells a flavor story of summer, of our roots, and the land we love.
So why make only one batch?
Everything about the syrup is a little bit limited, in fact it’s the initial reason we were inspired to start the Cocktail Farm Club with special batches for our top fans. Mountain and coastal foraged, the wild huckleberry resists cultivation. Each year we hire a foraging team, who go out in Fall to hunt the forest and we buy whatever we can from them.
The price is steep. We’re talking more expensive than a nice steak per pound. A gallon bag costs us $60. The berries are small about half the size of a typical blueberry or the size of an eraser on a pencil. The berries are hard to find, hard to pick in large volumes, and don’t yield a ton of juice per pound. The hunt is hard, the reward is worth it.
Cleaning them is also tricky, as tiny little leaves and stems find their way into the bags. Our freezer space is also limited, but we store these precious berries from their Fall harvest until late spring, when the new growth of the spruce trees emerge.
As those bright green tips emerge from the tree, unfurling from their papery skins in a tasty lemony scented push, the timer starts. We have a limited period of time to pick the tips for ultimate flavor. When we get them just right, the flavor is bright, citrusy, with just the slightest hint of woodsy. If you wait too long, the taste turns to resin, earth.