You cannot buy wild huckleberries in most grocery stores. You have to know where to look, and the people who know are not telling.

Montana's huckleberry season is a quiet, guarded thing. Pickers head into the mountains with buckets and bear spray, working the shaded slopes where the berries grow low and wild. The flavor is unlike any cultivated berry -- intensely sweet with a tart edge, almost floral, and deeply purple. When you cook them into a syrup, they become liquid Montana.

This lemon drop takes that syrup and pairs it with fresh lemon juice and moonshine for a cocktail that walks the line between sweet and sharp. The sugar rim catches your lip first, then the huckleberry hits, then the lemon cuts through, and the moonshine holds it all together on the back end. It is sophisticated without trying to be, the kind of drink that makes people close their eyes and nod.

Best served on a warm evening with nowhere to be and nothing to prove.