The Scientist Putting Texas’s Hidden Juniper Biodiversity in the Spotlight

Most gin is built on a single species of juniper. That species has traveled the world for 400 years, and it has shaped what people expect gin to taste like. Texas breaks that pattern. The state holds eight species of juniper, more than any other in the United States, and twice as many as Western Europe, where gin began.

That fact pulled Dr. Molly Cummings out of the lab. Cummings is a biology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she has studied fish cognition and sensory biology for over 20 years. She is also the founder of WildGins, a spirits company built on the juniper diversity she found in her own state. "Gin is 400 years old, and the central ingredient is juniper," she says. "Yet for 400 years, everyone's used the exact same species." Her work sits where scientific research, native botanicals, and conservation meet.

The discovery came through adventures in the field. Cummings spent years foraging across the Davis Mountains in West Texas, identifying trees and collecting berries. She settled on two species. The alligator juniper is an Ice Age survivor. It now grows only on isolated sky islands above 5,000 feet, where cool air and mountain soils let it persist. The redberry juniper survives a different pressure. Ranchers have spent decades clearing it, yet it holds on in a narrow elevation band on the high plains.

The flavors diverge sharply. Alligator juniper is bold, with a faint citrus note. That boldness makes WildBark West Texas Dry Gin crisp and clean. Redberry juniper is sweet, an unusual quality in a plant most people associate with pine. Cummings built WildJune Western Style Gin around it. "She's my gateway gin," she says, describing the sweeter spirit as an entry point for people who think they do not like gin.

The science did not stop at species selection. Cummings spent years documenting when each tree's berries reached peak ripeness. She tracked weather patterns, because heat and rainfall shift the harvest window. She learned to clean the berries without chemicals, stripping the wild yeast film that interferes with distillation. "I'm a chemically phobic person," she says. "I hate pesticides." She keeps field notebooks on hundreds of trees, tracking which produce well and when.

Cummings argues that wild trees differ from farmed ones. In the wild, roots connect underground and share resources. Farmed trees grow alone. She is careful to say there is no science proving the taste difference; however, she believes the wildness carries into the berry.

That record-keeping led to what the company describes as the world's first single-origin gin. Each batch is made from berries collected from a single, named tree. The tree's name appears on the label. Cummings harvests from each tree only every other year, giving the plants time to recover. She calls them her odd-year girls and her even-year girls.

The distillation follows the same care. Berries are lightly crushed to release their oils, then infused overnight in grain neutral spirit with the botanicals. The next day, the mixture is redistilled. Cummings describes that method as the most elegant way to make gin.

Her academic background shaped the method. Cummings completed a marine biology program at Stanford, then earned a PhD in ecology, evolution and marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The gin work, she has said, is an avocation rather than a departure.

Conservation runs through the business model. In 2021, WildGins launched a campaign called Give a Wild Buck. From November through February, the company donates $1 from every bottle purchased to The Nature Conservancy's West Texas chapter. The money supports land preservation in the region where the junipers grow.

Cummings frames the donation as a circle rather than a marketing device. The wild junipers give the gin its flavor. The land gives the junipers. Giving back, she argues, is part of keeping the resource intact.

WildGins sells in Texas liquor stores and ships online nationwide, with a few state exceptions. Cummings wants the brand in stores across the country. More than that, she wants Americans to notice what grows around them. Texas has eight juniper species. Most of the world's gin uses one. The difference, she suggests, is not a new invention. It is attention.