Distilleries in Portland
IF YOU KNOW | JAN 7, 2021
Cy Cain
WHO
Distilleries
WHAT
Portland, Oregon
WHERE
About
Co-founder Cy Cain and Casey Richwine started as bootlegger cocktail enthusiasts. After reading about a forgotten gin cocktail called Lintik in a spirits book and making batches of it for friends, the two found themselves with a serious fanbase. Cain and Richwine quit their jobs to start Straightaway and their line of batch bottled cocktails was born.
Straightaway Cocktails are spirited and balanced, with deference to time-honored recipes. Each is meticulously mixed using the best available ingredients and delivers on a properly balanced drink. Fastidious attention is paid to every detail: lemons and limes are juiced, simple syrup is made from scratch, and bitters are brewed in-house.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY STRAIGHTAWAY COCKTAILS
New Deal Distillery’s founder, Tom Burkleaux is, I believe, the fifteenth craft distiller in America. If you back the clock up to twelve to fifteen years ago, it was really still a Prohibition era. There was no such thing as craft or micro-distilling; all the conglomerates owned the space and giant companies had a lock on how to get spirits into the market. For Tom, it took almost three years to realise his business from concept to getting a bottle in the first liquor store in Oregon. He started out with gins and vodkas and now he makes a fabulous ginger liqueur (it’s freakishly great), and a hot vodka infused with pepper, called Hot Monkey. It’s all really bespoke stuff with a still that looks like it’s out of the movies.
They’re a family-run operation and they specialise in something called Aquavits, which is a Nordic liqueur. It has a fennel note to the alcohol, and you can make a really mean bloody mary out of it. You’re right on top of production when you walk into the tasting room – you’re twenty meters from the stills. It’s like looking into a watch where you can see all the mechanics, which is part of the charm of the distillery.
It’s run and owned by all women. Their bottles are iconic, they’re shaped like a little water-droplet and they’re all colored. They make a really great gin, and they’re getting into whisky now as well. They have a cool tasting room, and under normal circumstances, they have a food component too. There is usually a food truck so you can have a cocktail and get some food to go. It’s a beautiful space, and so thoughtfully put together.
They’ve been around for a long time and have won a lot of awards. It’s definitely a world class gin. They have a great little tasting room that’s located right off one of our preeminent shopping areas in Portland, so you can get your retail fix and then pop in for a great spirit and a mini cocktail.
They’ve got an old-world feel tasting room. It’s a small little space, where you feel like you’re in a speakeasy, and they have a really cool team working there. They do whiskeys and a number of spirits.
When things are rocking and rolling, we do a high-tea for cocktails in our tasting room. We have miniature glasses to try all our cocktails, and we also have some food pairing snacks to go with that. We’re unique in Portland in that we’re a distillery and a winery, and we partner with the vineyards here. In all of the bottles are our spirits, and in all of the cans, are our spritzers. They’re our version of an Aperol or an Amaro Spritz.
They make juice infused vodkas. Their labels are gorgeous, they’ve done a really great job at distribution across the country. They’re super popular here in Portland and are a really equitable price for their products. They use real berries for all the vodka infusions and make a nice gin too. They just opened their brand new tasting room right before quarantine – it's lovely!
Shine Distillery Grill is the first kind of craft-brewery food place – similar to the tap-house concept. You see the still behind glass and you sit in this mult-ilevel restaurant. It’s got pasta, burgers, fish and chips and a really nice rooftop bar as well. It’s a great spot to mark.
It’s a family-run liqueurs business – really micro, but a cool place for sure.
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