Most gin starts with juniper, and ours is no exception. But what makes Hollow Gin taste like these mountains is the handful of botanicals we forage ourselves, a few miles up the ridge, in the weeks when each one is at its best. We do it by hand because the timing matters more than the volume, and a sack of the wrong week tastes nothing like a basket of the right one.
Spruce tip, in spring
For a few short weeks in spring, red spruce pushes out bright green new growth at the end of each branch. Those tips are soft, citrusy, and resinous in a way the older needles never are. We pick only the new growth, never more than a fraction from any one tree, and we pick early in the day before the sun pulls the oils up and out. That window is maybe three weeks long, so when it opens we go.
Sumac and juniper, in late summer
Staghorn sumac turns its fuzzy red cones in late summer, and those cones carry a tart, almost lemonade-like brightness that lifts the whole spirit. We taste a cluster before we pick a stand, because a wet season can wash the tartness right out. Juniper we gather later still, when the berries have gone from green to a dusty blue and crush soft between two fingers. Green berries are all pine and no perfume; ripe ones bring the sweetness that balances the spruce.
How it lands in the glass
We do not boil the botanicals in the spirit. Instead they sit in a vapor basket above the pot, and the alcohol vapor rises through them on the way to the condenser, lifting the lighter aromatic oils and leaving the heavier, more bitter compounds behind. The result is a gin that reads piney and bright up front, with a soft citrus middle and a clean, dry finish, rather than a heavy, syrupy one.
It would be easier to buy dried botanicals by the kilo and run the same recipe year-round. It would also taste like anywhere. Foraging ties the gin to a place and a season, and that is the whole point. When you pour a glass of Hollow, you are tasting a specific spring on a specific ridge.