Portland Media Kit

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Liquid Assets (beverages)

Portland's Love Affair with all Things Wet

"(Portland is) the Burgundy of America, rich in produce, laden with seafood, and blessed with fabulous wines." – Gourmet magazine

When it comes to beverages, Portlanders don't mind if they're served hot or cold — they simply want them to be the best. That's why you can't walk more than a few blocks in any direction without bumping into a specialty coffee shop or a local brewpub, where craft brewers are busily creating some of the country's most distinctive beers. And that's not all Portland offers — it's also the birthplace of Tazo Tea and Oregon Chai. The city itself is nurturing a growing microdistillery movement, while the nearby Willamette Valley produces world-class wines, and Forest Grove, Ore., is home to SakéOne, the world's only American-owned saké brewery.

The following is an overview of the local beverage scene; for a more in-depth look, a dedicated "Liquid Assets" media kit is available from Travel Portland.

Craft Beer

Raise a pint to Portland's brewers. For more than two decades, Portland has been known as the epicenter of America's craft-brewing renaissance. Nicknamed "Beervana," Portland is the beer capital of the world, with 32 breweries in the city limits — 38 if you include the entire metro area. That's more than any other city on earth.

In July, Oregon's brewers take their taps to the tents along Portland's waterfront for the Oregon Brewers Festival. One of the nation's premier beer events, this annual brew fest attracts 60,000 microbrew enthusiasts. Portland is home to several other annual beer events, including the Spring Beer & Wine Festival, the Holiday Ale Festival, and the world's largest organic beer festival.

Beer Northwest magazine – www.beernw.com
Holiday Ale Festival – www.holidayale.com
North American Organic Brewers Festival – www.naobf.org
Oregon Brewers Guild – www.oregonbeer.org
Oregon Brewers Festival – www.oregonbrewfest.com
Spring Beer & Wine Festival – www.springbeerfest.com

Wine

Prime growing conditions and favorable clay-loam soils have fostered Oregon's rapid emergence as one of the world's finest wine-growing regions. A 30-minute drive from downtown puts travelers on the doorstep of the scenic Willamette Valley wine country, making winery tours a popular activity for Portland visitors.

Oregon Wine Board – www.oregonwine.org
Willamette Valley Visitors Association – www.oregonwinecountry.org
Willamette Valley Wineries – www.willamettewines.com

Brandy and Spirits

The logical next step for many Oregon craft brewers? Distilling liquor with the same dedication to quality and willingness to playfully experiment that they've employed when making beer. House Spirits, recognized for its Medoyeff Vodka and Aviation Gin, was founded by two former brewers who wanted to stamp the taste and flavor of the Pacific Northwest onto their versions of vodka, gin, rum and whiskey.

One of the first players on Portland's distilling scene was Clear Creek Distillery, which made its debut in 1985. Using local fruit, much of which is grown in his family's orchards in nearby Hood River, Ore., Clear Creek distiller/owner Steve McCarthy turns out a variety of products — eau de vie, grappa, whiskey, liqueurs and brandy — cited by The New York Times Magazine as "what many experts believe to be the best fruit brandies ever made in the U.S." Clear Creek's piece de resistance is its stunning Pear-in-the-Bottle brandy, which features a nearly perfect, fully grown pear inside each bottle.

Clear Creek Distillery – www.clearcreekdistillery.com
House Spirits – www.medoyeff.com

Saké

Why not saké? After all, next to rice, the most important ingredient in this fermented alcoholic beverage is water, and we've got plenty of that. SakéOne in Forest Grove, Ore., is the world's only American-owned and operated sakéry. Produced there are premium traditional sakés, as well as fruit-infused sakés. Premium saké, that is, the really good stuff, is served chilled, like white wine. A word to the wise: Our friends at SakéOne tell us that lesser quality sakés are often heated to mask their shortcomings.

SakéOne – www.sakeone.com

Coffee

In Portland, coffee connoisseurs permeate the population and are rivaled in number only by microbrew enthusiasts. Choices are plentiful, so where does one begin? Coffee purists insist on Stumptown Coffee Roasters. This local roastery has five Portland cafés and, according to Citysearch.com, is "quite possibly the Holy Grail in the crusade for the perfect cup." Another popular choice is World Cup Coffee and Tea, which has three cafés — one located inside Powell's Books and another inside the ultra-green Ecotrust Building. Whichever purveyor you choose, you'll notice that both Stumptown and World Cup adhere to business philosophies that emphasize sustainable social, environmental and economic practices.

Stumptown Coffee Roasters – www.stumptowncoffee.com
World Cup Coffee & Tea – www.worldcupcoffee.com

Tea

Tea may never displace coffee as the ubiquitous Northwest beverage, but local demand for ever more sophisticated teas from around the world is growing. It seems there's a tea shop in nearly every neighborhood, from Alberta and Beaumont to the Pearl District and Nob Hill. The Tao of Tea, which has teahouses in southeast Portland and the Nob Hill neighborhood, also operates the Tower of Cosmic Reflections Teahouse in the Portland Classical Chinese Garden. Built by Chinese artisans with materials shipped entirely from China, the teahouse is one of the most authentic in the United States. But it's The Tea Zone, in the Pearl, that's taken tea one step further, mixing it into cocktails at the shop's Camellia Lounge. Most popular drink? The MarTEAni, of course.

Portland Classical Chinese Garden – www.portlandchinesegarden.org
Tao of Tea – www.taooftea.com
The Tea Zone – www.teazone.com

Drinking Chocolate

Chocolate is dandy any time of the day — or year, but there's nothing better than warm, rich chocolate on a cool autumn day. Most of us grew up calling drinking chocolate "cocoa" (marshmallows optional). But now cocoa has gone gourmet, with numerous shops, from bakeries to chocolate emporiums, all vying to be Portland's favorite place to drink premium chocolate mixed with cream and the occasional exotic spice. Sahagun Handmade Chocolates and Cacao, which has two downtown outlets, are collecting rave reviews.

Sahagun Handmade Chocolates – www.sahagunchocolates.com
Cacao – www.cacaodrinkchocolate.com

Rain

Ah, the mother of all liquids and life-givers. Portlanders have a particular affinity for their liquid sunshine — especially since it's a base ingredient to many of the city's favorite beverages. Portland has almost as many varieties of rain as it has beer: mist, light rain, showers and the occasional downpour, to name a few. Mother Nature sets Portland's laid-back tone with her most common variety, the mellow shower. Washington Flyer magazine (July/August 2000) proclaims Portland's rain is "half-hearted — sort of like those automatic fine-mist sprays that nourish veggies in the grocery stores — and [it] doesn't impede outdoor activities." The rain's welcome presence is the key to our lush forests, verdant wine country and abundant gardens. As the weather changes, so does the personality of such places as the Japanese Garden, where water droplets shimmer on sculpted shrubs and create rippled patterns on the koi pond. Of course, during a visit in summer or early fall, you're likely to miss the rain altogether.

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