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Portland Cocktail Week - Day 3: The Distillers
By Geoffrey Kleinman on 10/23/2011
The Great American Distillers Festival was the center piece for Day 3 of Portland Cocktail Week. Distillers from around the country converged on Portland to sample their spirits and connect with bartenders. It was a mix of local craft distillers along with larger national brands (like Pernod Ricard, Martin Miller's Gin, and Four Roses Bourbon).
A highlight of the distillers festival included a new potato vodka from Washington called Skip Rock Vodka. Skip Rock Distiller, Ryan Hembree, decided to make a potato vodka after realizing how few are manufactured in the US. "There are only seven potato vodkas out there, and we felt we could give a different approach to potato in vodka," explains Ryan.
Some of the other notable things being poured at the distillers festival included: Dry Fly's Bourbon 101, an extremely hard-to-come-by American Bourbon, whose first bottling went for $2500 at a recent charity auction; Bull Run Distilling’s Temperance Trader Straight Bourbon Whiskey, which has gotten a lot of buzz lately; Big Bottom Whiskey pouring the second batch of their port finished bourbon (and it's even better than batch one); Elixir, with their new and improved Calisaya - Liquore Italiano, which is now being distilled in Eugene; New Deal’s delicious coffee liqueur; and, Decco Distilling’s Holiday Spiced Liqueur that tastes like Christmas.
Another notable debut at the Great American Distillers festival was Jenn Hegstrom's new company Baby Barrels, a range of small-sized barrels for home aging of spirits and cocktails. Jenn Hegstrom is a bartender at Pope House Bourbon Lounge in Portland, and so she knows her whiskey. Baby Barrels looks to be a fantastic company and she's sure to have her hands full with making barrels and slinging cocktails.
The Great American Distillers Festival was the embarkation point for the double decker bus Cognac Bar Tour of Portland. Each year the Portland Cocktail Week Bar Tour is one of the highlight events of the festival, and this year was no exception. The Cognac bus made stops at Central Speakeasy, Dig A Pony, The Driftwood Room, and The Original. At each stop riders were treated to a different cognac cocktail and learned about the history of cognac, its use in cocktails, and where the category is going.
The Cognac bus dropped riders off at the big party of the night, Robots vs. Bartenders. It was quite a smack down between some of the Northwest's top bartenders and the cocktail making machines. While it was close in some cases, the robots failed to be able to adjust their drinks. While each drink was fairly uniform, not all of them were palatable.
The evening ended with The Sweet Life Party at Beaker & Flask with Jackie Patterson, Jennifer Colliau, Allison Webber, and Anu Apte behind the bar mixing drinks.
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