How Award-Winning Pacific Northwest Distillers are Using Foraged Botanicals

The Pacific Northwest region of the United States is rich in diverse plant life, and local distillers are taking advantage of it, bring the native terroir of the region to the glass. NY International Spirits Competition award winners Astraea Spirits and Fast Penny Spirits not only use local ingredients but foraged ingredients. 

Danielle Leavell photo courtesy of Astraea Spirits

Astraea Spirits

Danielle Leavell, Founder and Master Distiller at Seattle’s Astraea Spirits, grew up in the Midwest, the child of two Reiki Masters, and says “herbs and botanicals were the cornerstones of our lives.” But it wasn’t until 2012 when she tried an amaro cocktail, that she realized that “there’s this whole world of botanical spirits that I have never even known about.” Her career path pivoted from photography to distilling, and after graduating from the prestigious Master of Science Brewing and Distilling program at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, she returned to Seattle a Master Distiller and gin enthusiast. She launched Astraea, named for the Greek Goddess of purity and precision, in 2019, and began producing a line of 4 London dry gins, each with a unique botanical profile.

Each of her 45% ABV gins starts with the classic London dry flavors of juniper, coriander, and citrus, then Leavell adds locally sourced botanicals to help paint a picture of each particular Pacific Northwest landscape. “There's a lot of similarities between the Pacific Northwest and Scotland. So I wanted to…create these hyper terroir driven gins that…really give you a sense of the wild landscape that we live in and are surrounded by.”

Adds Leavell, “Mist, our gateway gin, has less juniper, more citrus, and is super fabulous as a gin and tonic…it’s so refreshing, savory, bright, and clean. Meadow is more U.K. style…soft and floral, with lemon balm, verbena, lots of chamomile, and a honeysuckle finish. Ocean is more heavily junipered, plus it has local seaweed. It’s clean and briny, with lots of minerality and salinity–the perfect martini gin… with a little pinch of salt and olives.” Mist won Silver and Meadow won Double Gold in the 2022 NY International Spirits Competition and Astraea was named Washington State Distillery of the Year. Astraea Forest will be released this fall is packed with local spruce tips, with notes of balsam and winter grapefruit. 

Jamie Hunt photo courtesy of Fast Penny Spirits

Fast Penny Spirits

Amaro is the spirit of choice at Seattle’s Fast Penny Spirits. “I come from Sicilian heritage with a family who has been making liqueurs and wine at home for generations,” says Jamie Hunt, Founder and CEO. “My love of amaro started in my 20’s during my travels around Italy, where I would purchase bottles from various towns. When I was looking to shift careers and start a new business, I wanted to do something I was passionate about.”

“Our amaro starts with an upcycled grape spirit to lower water waste and our carbon footprint. It is blended with over 45 organic and wildcrafted botanicals and then aged in stainless steel tanks before a portion of it finds its way into our wooden foeders, where we use the solera method for aging and consistency. Part of each batch goes into the foeders and when we bottle we blend foeder-aged amaro with our newly made amaro to deliver more complexity without losing the freshness.”

Those botanicals include some excitingly offbeat ones, including black truffles foraged by Truffle Dog Company, local saffron, cocoa nibs, and hazelnuts, dried Rainier cherries, rosebuds, Willamette Valley hops, and cascara, which is the fruit husk that surrounds a coffee bean. “In most cases,” says Hunt, this “fruit is discarded or composted. [I use it because] I loved three things: the flavor, the sustainability, and the added income for farmers in being able to sell a byproduct of coffee growing.”

The results: Amaricano, a rich, savory, warm amaro that can be enjoyed neat as a digestivo or mixed with whiskey as the bitter element in cocktails like a Black Manhattan, and Amaricano Bianco, an herbaceous, bright yellow spirit that adds fruity citrus notes to a spritz or a white Negroni. Fast Penny won a Silver for Fast Penny Amaricano and a Bronze for Fast Penny Amaricano Bianco in the 2021 NY International Spirits Competition. 

The Future of Foraged Botanical Spirits

The Pacific Northwest—Oregon, Washington, and Idaho—are home to producers who have long used local fruit to make liqueurs. But the use of foraged wild ingredients adds yet another element, a more profound and unique sense of place. The use of local botanicals also pays homage to the past and to traditional products and touches on sustainability. Foraging for ingredients may be a fairly recent direction for some newer producers but has deep roots and is likely to continue as creative distillers seek to distinguish their products in meaningful ways.