I Almost Walked Past the Best Drink I Had in Portland

A craft spirits tasting in Portland filters by what you think belongs in a bottle. At New Deal Distillery in the Central Eastside, the tasting room smells faintly of chocolate and chili pepper — the residue of experiments that have been running since the building became the first distillery on what is now Distillery Row, back in 2004. The bartender pours something you didn't know vodka could be, and your assumptions about what a base spirit is for start shifting before you've finished the sip. But there's another pour happening in Southeast Portland, in a room where the bottles change with the seasons because the recipe starts in an orchard, not a laboratory. A husband-and-wife team has spent years chasing down the most expressive fruit in the Pacific Northwest and distilling it in a German copper pot still. That second tasting room belongs to Stone Barn Brandyworks. And the drink you almost walked past is the one that tastes like a particular hillside, in a particular September.

New Deal didn't open with a business plan built around safe bets. When Tom Burkleaux co-founded the distillery in 2004, Portland had no craft distilling scene to speak of — Oregon's post-Prohibition landscape had left the field open for decades. What filled that vacuum was an inventor's instinct: take a base spirit and push it somewhere it hadn't been.

Hot Monkey Vodka came out of that instinct. The pepper infusion involves five Southwestern chili peppers integrated at the production level — not a garnish, not a cocktail ingredient, but part of the spirit's identity. Mud Puddle Bitter Chocolate Vodka followed a similar logic: roasted cacao nibs worked into the distillation process so the chocolate is structural, not decorative. The tasting room and bottle shop at 900 SE Salmon Street still operates with that workshop energy. Bottles line the shelves like prototypes. The pours come with context — why this batch, why this flavor combination, what didn't work last time.

What registers when you're sitting at that bar isn't polish. It's iteration. The spirit you're tasting exists because someone tried something, tasted the result, adjusted, and tried again. The Central Eastside neighborhood around New Deal has grown into Portland's Distillery Row, but New Deal was here before the district had a name.

Stone Barn Brandyworks operates from a different premise entirely. Sebastian and Erika Degens didn't start with a base spirit and ask what to do with it. They started with fruit — and the fruit decides.

Their distillery at 3315 SE 19th Avenue is organized around the growing season. Spring brings rhubarb and Rainier cherries. Summer means green walnuts for Nocino and apricots at their peak. Fall fills the warehouse with bins of quince, pears, and apples. Each fruit arrives with its own window — pick too early and the brandy lacks depth, pick too late and the sugars have already turned. The Degens work with a German copper pot still, and the European tradition of fruit brandy runs through everything they make. A pear brandy here isn't pear-flavored vodka. It's distilled pear — the fruit is the entire source material, and what comes through the still carries the specifics of where that pear grew and when it was harvested.

What registers when you're tasting at Stone Barn isn't invention. It's attention. The Apricot Liqueur tastes the way it does because someone drove to a specific orchard at a specific moment in the season and decided these were the ones. The Pinot Noir Grappa exists because local winemakers had grape skins worth distilling. Every bottle has a provenance that traces back to soil, not to a flavor concept.

The axis here isn't quality. Both distilleries make spirits with intention and craft. The axis is where the recipe starts.

New Deal's recipes start with curiosity. What happens if you put five chili peppers into vodka at the molecular level? What if chocolate isn't a cocktail ingredient but a distillation ingredient? The satisfaction of tasting at New Deal is encountering something that didn't exist until someone in this room decided to make it exist.

Stone Barn's recipes start with what the land produced that year. What happens when you capture a September pear at its three-day peak and distill it before the sugar changes? The weight of tasting at Stone Barn is specificity — the knowledge that this bottle couldn't have been made in any other place or any other month.

Both run tastings for under ten dollars. Both are in Southeast Portland's distillery corridor. Both will change what you think Portland's spirits scene is about. The question is whether you want to be surprised by what someone invented — or by what the season delivered.

900 SE Salmon Street, Central Eastside Industrial District. Corner of SE 9th and Salmon. Part of Portland's Distillery Row corridor.

3315 SE 19th Avenue, Suite B, Southeast Portland. About a mile south of the core Distillery Row cluster.

Open daily, noon to 6 PM. Tastings, mini cocktails, and bottle shop browsing available during open hours. Check their site for holiday closures.

Monday through Friday, 11 AM to 5 PM. Saturday, noon to 5 PM. Verify current hours on their website before visiting — seasonal adjustments are common.

New Deal runs exploratory spirit flights. Stone Barn tastings have historically been around five dollars. Both are accessible without reservations for small groups. Groups of six or more should call ahead at either location.

Street parking in the Central Eastside is available but competitive during evenings and weekends. Stone Barn's SE 19th location has easier parking access. Bike parking available at both.

Both distilleries are accessible by TriMet bus. The Central Eastside is also served by bikeshare.

Portland's distillery corridor draws visitors year-round, with weekend afternoons seeing the highest foot traffic. Guests staying in surrounding communities can build a full afternoon in the district — tasting rooms, food options, and neighborhood energy reward a longer window rather than a quick stop. Planning lodging in advance opens up quieter options with more space outside the city center.

Two tasting rooms. Two philosophies of where a spirit begins. New Deal hands you something that didn't exist twenty years ago and asks you to reconsider what a vodka can be. Stone Barn hands you something that existed for three days on a branch in September and asks you to reconsider what you've been missing. Neither pour apologizes for what it is. The one you almost walked past is the one you'll remember — whichever door you choose.