By far one of the most interesting exhibitors at this season’s Elements Showcase fragrance trade show was Juniper Ridge. It’s a small brand that’s run by backpackers who harvest things like wild sage and downed pine boughs and then steam distill their essences to create hardy fragrances that invoke very specific places in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest.
“A lot of people are going to hate our fragrances because they aren’t the standard lavender, rosemary, bergamot, etc.,” Juniper Ridge’s Hall Newbegin told me at Elements. “But guys love it because it’s different and really outdoorsy. My test for our fragrances is this: does it smell like the place? Does it smell like Big Sur?
“Our cedar is nothing like the cedar you’re used to. We’re getting completely different fragrances because we’re using totally different ingredients. While everyone else is using the same European and synthetic cedars, we’re making our own from wild American cedar.
“There’s no perfume in the world that smells like this,” Newbegin boasts. “I’m not a perfumer, I’m a hiker and backpacker.” And, he might add, a wild plant gatherer and a backwoods fragrance distiller. He uses a converted whiskey still and he even made a giant bong to infuse his distilled plant and tree essences with smoke.
More on Juniper Ridge later.
If it really does smell like Big Sur then I am in! I wonder if he will branch out and bring us Joshua Tree and Salton Sea ?
Thanks for the comment! I’ve never encountered a fragrance maker so committed to places. Juniper Ridge goes beyond the typical perfumer’s goal of just being inspired by a place. They actually hike through forests and gather its elements and distill them to replicate the smells of the places. So does it really smell like Big Sur? I think it’ll come as close as you could get in a bottle.
Now, a Salton Sea fragrance? That would be something!