This particular recipe was inspired by a very average cocktail I had recently. I ordered it because it contained douglas fir brandy. How interesting is that? Juniper is the only conifer flavor I was familiar with in cocktails. But the douglas fir was overwhelmed by citrus to the point that I could not distinguish it in the least. It was a fine cocktail, but nothing set it apart from so many other citrus-forward cocktails I’d had before.

It was my intent initially to make this cocktail using my first batch of fir tip syrup. But I fell into the same trap that I have seen bedevil others: that piney flavor just didn’t come through.

The ponderosa pine is a delightfully fragrant tree. On warm days the bark gives off an odor that I have heard described as both vanilla and butterscotch. Whatever you smell, it is delightful, and I can think of few more pleasant scent-memories than walking through a ponderosa forest on a warm, sunny day, smelling the trees on the wind. Like the smell of honeysuckle, it sticks in your mind as a scent of summer.

What I have founds during months of experimentation is that it is very difficult to get a significant pine flavor out of needles without the use of alcohol. It makes sense, right? Pine sap is incredibly hydrophobic, that is sort of the point. When a tree is damaged, it floods the area with sap to prevent rot and infection. You can see it in the picture below, where a live limb was removed from this tree, and it really flooded the area.

When you get sap on your clothes or your windshield, there are really only two ways to remove it: you can scrape it off or you can dissolve it with alcohol. So, months of attempting to get that flavor into syrup were only moderately successful. But alcohol will pull it out in only a few days time–and with very little effort.

Ponderosa-Infused Liquor

Ingredients:
Handful of ponderosa needles
16 oz. scotch or vodka

Directions:
It does not get any simpler than this, you’re just dropping the needles into the vodka to let them infuse. You can toss in a little bit of dried sap as well, if you pick some up during your foraging.

Let them sit for a week or so to give time to infuse. Too much longer than that and you’ll end up with turpentine. When you’ve left it sit a week, taste a bit to make sure you’ve got the flavor you want, and strain the needles out. You should be able to use any variety of conifer, so try out your favorite. Or maybe throw together a mixed-conifer liquor representing your local forest.

With a smoky scotch and aromas of Ponderosa, the flavors are right, so I’m going to name this cocktail after the only bit of writing that has ever made me any money: a poem called Fire in the Forest. I wrote it during the winter after my second fire season. I was in a creative writing class in which I had to write a set of poems. Poetry is not my preferred medium, but I was inspired and wrote a pantoum about my experiences up to that point in wildland fire.

On my professor’s advice I entered the poem in a contest through CU Boulder called the Thompson awards. The focus of these awards is writing that represents the American West. The subject was clearly well-suited to the contest, but I was still very surprised when I got the phone call telling me that I had won. I’ll put the poem at the end if you are interested.

Here it is, a ponderosa pine cocktail that is smoky with just the right amount of pine. Enjoy!

Fire in the Forest

Ingredients:
1.5 oz. Ponderosa-infused Scotch (or vodka)
½ tsp Ponderosa Syrup (optional)
Club Soda
Ice

Directions:
Mix the syrup into the liquor, add ice, fill with soda. Painfully simple and fucking delightful.

Like I said, poetry is not my medium, but here it is:

Fire in the Forest

Fire in the forest
Smoke drifts thick and high
Flames leap before us
The column fills the sky

Smoke drifts thick and high
Tired on our feet
The column fills the sky
The days seem to repeat

Tired on our feet
Packs dig into shoulders
The days seem to repeat
The duff nearby smolders

Packs dig into shoulders
We scrape out a line
The duff nearby smolders
We put out the pine

We scrape out a line
We dig through the ash
We put out the pine
Man and nature clash

We dig through the ash
Flames leap before us
Man and nature clash
Fire in the forest