11 Dec 22nD–Dec 28th, 2022 phoenixnewtimes.com phoenix new Times | cONTeNTs | feeDBacK | OPiNiON | NeWs | feaTuRe | NighT+Day | culTuRe | film | cafe | music | MEET THE COUPLE FORAGING FLAVORS TO CRAFT A UNIQUELY ARIZONA GIN. BY CHRIS MALLOY O n a fall morning in a sleepy Sedona neighborhood, two men stand in the sunshine of a grassy stretch of roadside. While chatting, they pick small, chalky, blue berries from a giant tree roughly the size of a hot air balloon. The tree is a juniper. Cars pass. The drivers look over, wonder, and drive away. Bikers whiz by. Two elderly women approach, staring at the men armed with baskets and focused on the great tree, one of the 60 or so juniper species in the world, and one of the many swaying in the canyons of Sedona. “What do you do with those juniper berries?” one woman asks. “We make gin!” replies the man in the straw hat, Ryan Lawrence. The woman squints. “Out of these berries?” “Is it good gin?” asks the second woman. “You can buy it at Clark’s Market,” says Lawrence’s companion, Thomas Giddings, dangling an unsaid invitation that they taste the answer. The gin is indeed a good gin. Suncliffe Gin is a new-wave spirit launched in 2020 by Lawrence and Giddings, along with a third partner, Clare Byrne. It gets a uniquely Arizonan flavor from 12 botanicals that are mostly foraged from Sedona by Lawrence and Giddings. The flavor? Earthy, fresh, clean, elusive. It shines a surprising light on the juniper without a tsunami of pine, despite being born from a cool, pine-treed land of hard blue skies, mystic energy vortexes, and sidewinding red canyons. In its short life, the 45 percent ABV spirit has become a staple at bars across Arizona and has gained traction in New York City. Byrne is based in New York. Lawrence and Giddings, who recently got married, split their time between Sedona and Tucson. They forage around Sedona, including at a juniper grove on Suncliffe Drive, where the pair did their first wild harvesting. The spirit is then distilled in Napa Valley. For the roughly 12,000 bottles of the 2022 Suncliffe batch, which is the third vintage, they’ll need some 200 pounds of juniper berries from three species: shaggy bark, oneseed, and alligator. Procuring the berries takes about one SOULFUL SPIRIT >> p 12 Suncliffe’s Ryan Lawrence and Thomas Giddings hit the trails in search of juniper berries. Chris Malloy Chris Malloy
