Customers Turn to Juniper Lattes, Pine Needle Ice Cream

Food’s new favorite flavor is the forest. 

According to a recent report from the New York Times, the next big flavor isn’t pumpkin spice — it’s pine. Food and beverage makers are embracing the taste of forests and meadows. They are betting that consumers will seek those flavors to feel calmer and more connected to nature. 

For example, the cafe K Brew in Knoxville, Tennessee, offers a Smoky Mountain Latte that infuses milk with sage and juniper. Meanwhile, Nashville, Tennessee-based Forest Water offers botanical sodas inspired by nature, including the “bitter, sweet and woodsy” Alpine flavor. 

Additionally, diners in Manhattan have the option of spending $28 on a Forest Old Fashioned at the restaurant 425 Park, made with pine liqueur, spruce tips and alpine bitters. In Pennsylvania, Fox Meadows Creamery offers a popular seasonal winter flavor called Foraged Pine and Rosemary, complete with flavors infused from handpicked white pine needles. 

As another indicator of an industry-wide trend towards woodsy tastes, syrup-maker Torani recently named Forest Pine its flavor of the year. 

“Across markets, we’re seeing consumers show more interest in outdoor-inspired, botanical and earthy flavors,” Ashley Doolin, a product development scientist at PepsiCo, told the Times. 

At chain restaurants like Sweetgreen, the word “foraged” has begun making an appearance. The addition brings the language of a woodland walk to fast-casual dining. Major food companies are taking note; product-development teams are exploring ingredients and flavor cues that promise a closer connection to the natural world. 

“Now we’re starting to see increased interest in flavors that might be about the place, the origin, the landscape or even craftsmanship,” Sally Lyons Wyatt, head of consumer goods and food service at market research firm Circana, told the Times. “Consumers increasingly want flavors that evoke nature, foraging and the outdoors.”

Nature flavors have recently become popular

Food trends rarely follow a straight line, per the Times. A flavor can feel inevitable one year and utterly out of step the next, depending on the broader mood. 

Starbucks learned that in 2018, when it introduced a juniper latte. The drink failed to take off, and Starbucks discontinued it the following year. 

The national mood has since grown more uneasy. That anxiety helps explain why nature has become such a potent food cue, said Eve Turow-Paul, a food-trend researcher. 

“Part of this is about control and safety and the loss of control over food sources,” Turow-Paul told the Times. “People don’t trust corporations, and they don’t trust the government. They’re saying, ‘I need to return the locus of control to myself. Lavender and sage and pine and juniper just seem natural. Nature seems safer. It seems less likely I am being duped.’”

Stephanie Mattucci, the principal food and drink strategist for the global food research firm Mintel, told the Times that forest flavors are a way to “ground ourselves.”

“People are attracted to alpine flavors as a way to step away from overstimulation and into the therapeutic benefit of the forest and the trees and mountains,” she said.

Food’s new favorite flavor is the forest. 

According to a recent report from the New York Times, the next big flavor isn’t pumpkin spice — it’s pine. Food and beverage makers are embracing the taste of forests and meadows. They are betting that consumers will seek those flavors to feel calmer and more connected to nature. 

For example, the cafe K Brew in Knoxville, Tennessee, offers a Smoky Mountain Latte that infuses milk with sage and juniper. Meanwhile, Nashville, Tennessee-based Forest Water offers botanical sodas inspired by nature, including the “bitter, sweet and woodsy” Alpine flavor.