Adam F.
Yelp
I'm a bit conflicted on this one, star-wise, because while it was a neat chill little place, everyone there was super friendly and super excited about the products they're making and about telling people about their products, and *some* of the products were great, it was also the only place on the Portland distillery trail I wasn't totally blown away by. I didn't know that up-front, though, obviously, so I obviously paid the extra $5 to try everything (a tasting of half the lineup is comped with the Passport, it's $5 to try the rest).
The vodka... really tasted to me like your ordinary cheap vodka. The bourbon, too, tasted like cheap bourbon. And their aquavit, wasn't bad, but definitely the least flavorful/exciting of the several aquavits I tried that weekend.
On the other hand, the single malt was quite good (though not *so* good that I feel like I'd be likely to pay 50 bucks for it), as were the two whiskeys finished in interesting things (especially the chinato-finished, the one thing I was actually tempted to get a bottle of, as it was super unique, being surprisingly fruity without being sweet - they describe it as basically being a manhattan right out of the glass, just add the cherry, and yeah, that's pretty accurate. It was great.) And the mushroom-infused vodka... well, it was the only thing I spit-bucketed the whole trip, but the point of it was clearly not as a sipping spirit, but to put a splash in cocktails, and I do think it would be a great thing to have around for certain cocktails. It was by no means bad (it was actually pretty awesome), just clearly wasn't designed to stand on its own.
I would've been a lot happier if they had had any minis for sale, because I would totally have loved to buy a few minis, but I wasn't going to buy full bottles of any of them (either because they were really pricey, like the single barrel or the chinato-finished whiskey, or because I couldn't possibly ever use a whole 750ml bottle, one little splash at a time in an occasional cocktail, in the case of the mushroom vodka.)