In Search of the Last Wild Juniper
A journey through the misty highlands of Scotland reveals what the modern gin revival has forgotten — and what it might yet recover.
Somewhere above Loch Carron, where the granite slopes give way to peat-stained heather and the wind carries salt from the Minch, the junipers still grow. Not the clipped hedgerow specimens of Edinburgh gardens or the cultivars bred for ornamental symmetry — these are wild Juniperus communis, gnarled and wind-scoured, their berries darkening to violet in the late-autumn cold.
The Distiller's Dilemma
The crisis facing small-batch gin is not one of supply but of memory. When the craft boom began around 2010, most new distillers sourced juniper from the Balkans — Macedonia, Albania — where wild populations still blanket the limestone hillsides. Few paused to ask why Scotland, once home to vast juniper thickets, had none left to harvest.
"The finest gin is grown in soil before copper."
— Morag Beaton, Kintail Distillery