Infused gin company puts Arizona’s signature tastes into a bottle
SEDONA, AZ (AZFamily) — It started out as an idea, then a hobby, but now a local spirits company is making a name for itself with ingredients that are about as Arizona as it gets.
Arizona’s Family’s Ian Schwartz headed to Sedona to learn how Arizona is being infused into Suncliffe Gin.
“I always thought of Suncliffe as a postcard from the Southwest, so as it grows I think it will be representing Arizona in a really beautiful way,” said Ryan Lawrence, who began Suncliffe a few years ago with his husband Thomas Giddings and their friend Clare Bryne started.
Its ingredients and botanicals are picked from the trees and bushes that make up the amazing landscape of our state.
Lawrence said juniper and manzanita berries that dot these trails are infused into their gin. They have special permits with the forest service to pick theses berries, and on any given foraging trip, they could collect 80 pounds of them.
The two started making the gin, which they jokingly refer to as the original infused vodka, during COVID as fun hobby while the world dramatically slowed down.
Friends loved it and told Lawrence and Giddings they should sell it, and now you can find Suncliffe Gin in tons of local bars and on grocery store shelves around Arizona.
Giddings said it’s not just berries, but even the bark from the famous ponderosa pines goes into this spirit.
“If you smell the bark, it has this amazing butterscotch-vanilla, so we impart some of that into the gin,” he said. “It’s not a sweetness, but it brings a very special element.”
After foraging, the two set up a cool pop-up shop to show Ian how to make a classic gin cocktail—the gin martini—and of course the refreshing gin and tonic.
Lawrence said they hope to get Suncliffe in stores around the country to share with the world what us Arizonans already know.
“I think we want to convey how beautiful it is here and really tell the story of the land is what we are,” he said.
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