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Juniper Ridge In Store And Online November 24 2015
Juniper Ridge is an Oakland, California based fragrance company started by Hall Newbegin. Juniper Ridge is his solution to the perfume world becoming, in his words, "weird and disconnected from nature." A self-proclaimed "nature freak," Newbegin strives to create aromatic snapshots of his favorite places, whether that's California's Big Sur or the lakes and peaks of Oregon's Mount Hood.
Born in Oregon, Newbegin spent the summers of his childhood and early adult life on the trails of different national parks learning the names of flowers, harvesting wild mushrooms, and making fermented-honey wine. Newbegin's wildcrafting experience starts in '92, when he took an herbal medicine class in Oakland. These few days spent in Sierra Nevada gave life to what he calls the "primitive parts of [his] brain," or his "animal senses." From then on, Newbegin has been unable to stay away from the wild.
After years of harvesting medicinal plants for his own collection and sometimes for tincture makers or commercial mushroom gatherers, Newbegin started Juniper Ridge. All Juniper Ridge products are made from 100% wildcrafted ingredients gathered by a small team of people that go into the wild for up to weeks at a time. The ingredients are then distilled, tinctured, infused or any of several other old world perfuming techniques in the Field Lab (pictured below) to create a scent unique to that harvest.
Each batch is hand numbered and produced in limited quantities, not by choice but by necessity. “We couldn't make any more if we wanted to—the plants and flowers are done for the year,” Newbegin says. 10% of all Juniper Ridge profits are donated to a portfolio of Western Wilderness Defense organizations. The company tirelessly works to promote education as to how best to protect the intact forest habitats of the West.
All pictures taken from JuniperRidge.com