Courier Coffee Roasters
Portland, Oregon
by Adam Sawyer | photo by Adam Sawyer
The Northwest is practically synonymous with coffee. And with more roasters than any other U.S. city, according to Joel Domreis, coffee savant and owner of Courier Coffee Roasters, Portland is the region’s pacesetter. Filter down even further, and you’ll find that Domreis’ small coffee house downtown is roasting and pouring what is arguably the finest coffee in America’s coffee-roasting capital.
Courier Coffee Roasters does many things other elite Northwest roasters do. They focus on high-quality, single-origin beans, showcasing the terroir of specific regions. They have relationships with the farms and cooperatives from which they source. And they also focus on light and medium roasts. But Domreis’ shop ups the ante in all three aspects and then adds more to the pot.
photo by Adam Sawyer
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by Allen Cox | photo by Modern Hotel & Bar
If you are traveling to Boise, you could miss it. Be sure you don’t. Lowslung and understated at the edge of downtown, in the up-and-coming Linen District, the sophisticated lounge at the Modern Hotel and Bar is a secret to most strangers. Even though it’s in a hotel, locals comprise 70 percent of this fresh little bar’s patrons. The Modern Hotel and Bar is a handsomely renovated mid-century modern structure. It’s not a stretch to imagine the place was a Travelodge in its day. Turns out, it was.
The cool, contemporary surroundings account for only a fraction of the allure. The drinks are the real showpieces here. Some are sophisticated, some are kitschy and some ordinary—concoctions that seem to reflect the diverse clientele occupying the crowded yet comfortable lounge buzzing with quiet conversations. People savor their drinks here—no one is slamming rounds of shots—so the bartender can focus on cocktail artistry. And that’s exactly what’s served here.
According to head bartender Micheal Bowers, the secret to the Modern’s success lies in the absence of gimmicks. “It’s all about craft,” he says. “We do the same thing over and over, and we do it very, very well.”
by Roy Stevenson | photo by Linda Popovich
With more than 16,000 vineyard acres and more than 60 wineries, the Yakima Valley Appellation is Washington’s oldest wine-growing region. With so many wineries to tempt your palate, wine tasting in the valley is a formidable project, so a good place to sample a broad variety of the region’s thirty different types of wines is in downtown Yakima’s four tasting rooms.
Start at Gilbert Cellars on North Front Street, located on a corner of Yakima’s historic district. Nate and Sean Gilbert started Gilbert Cellars in 2004 and green harvest and hand prune their five vineyards on the Wahluke Slope, Horseheaven Hills, and Ahtanam Valley to produce powerfully flavored, yet delicately balanced wines, such as syrah and chardonnay.
Gilbert Cellar’s modern upstairs tasting room is pleasant enough, but tasting room manager Laura Rankin showed me their best-kept secret— the cozy downstairs cellar room. Decorated with local artists’ paintings hung on rustic rock-embedded walls and soft leather chairs arranged in intimate alcoves to sink into, the cellar is a great place to sit, sip and talk. On Friday evenings the cellar room features live music.
Kana is the native word for the spirit or fire within a mountain, and Kana Winery named itself after this spirit, referring to the volcanic soil’s influence on wines in the Yakima Valley. Located in a historic downtown building, the “Old Yakima” turn-of-the-century Kana Winery Tasting Room on 2nd Street offers up some superb tempranillos and Kana’s flagship blend, the Dark Star (syrah, mourvedre and grenache).
by Cole Danehower | photo by Jason Tomczak
Rosé wines still get a bum rap in America. Any wine that is not robustly ruby, glowingly golden, or steely white elicits unkind remarks about namby-pamby wines that are little more than red wines on training wheels.
Adherents to this view must not be tasting our recent regional rosé wines. A rosé renaissance is blossoming in the Northwest, redefining the character of these refreshing springtime sippers and earning a place on any wine lover’s table. And “refreshing” is the operative word when talking rosés. The whole idea behind rosés is to craft a tasty and satisfying wine that’s easy to drink in the warm months. When the weather heats up, a heavy red can be unwelcome, a buttery white unwieldy, and a flinty white too austere. What is called for is a fresh-feeling wine with plenty of pert fruit and juicy flavors, low tannins and bright acidity. Voilà, rosé!
To appreciate what goes into a great rosé, it is important to remember that all grape juice is essentially colorless. Squeeze a cabernet sauvignon or pinot noir grape and you’ll get clear juice. The color of a wine—as well as much of its flavor, tannin, and even aroma— comes from exposing the skins of the grape to its juice in the winemaking process. The more exposure the skins have to the juice, the more color and flavor will be extracted.
The best rosés are the result of an exquisite balancing act. On the one hand, rosé winemakers want to make an uplifting and refreshing wine from red grapes—without the weight and substance of a fully-realized red wine—by minimizing the juice’s contact with the skins. Yet they also need to mingle the two elements enough to impart sufficient flavor and substance to make the wine interesting, engaging and enlivening.
Good rosés don’t just happen, they require careful winemaking skill and judgment. Northwest winemakers are successfully making rosés from all kinds of grapes and styles. These lovely wines deliver plenty of varietal flavor, but in a lighter, fresher style than their more fleshy big brothers. A taste of these great Northwest wines means you’ll never be blasé about rosé again.
by Wes Morrow | photo by Elizabeth Morrow
You wouldn’t think it would be hard to find a bar whose name was its own address. But that’s the beauty of 1022 South. Like the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’s classic series, “The Chronicles of Narnia,” 1022 South only seems to appear when it is ready. 1022 South is tucked away in Tacoma’s Hilltop district, a largely residential area in the hills above downtown. It might be the last place you’d look for what the bar offers: possibly the best hand-crafted drinks in the South Puget Sound region.
At night, the faint glow of turnof-the-century light bulbs seeps out onto the sidewalk. The warm, enigmatic character of the bar recalls scenes from a Hemingway novel and makes it feel more like you’re in 1920s Paris than 21st century Washington state. The bar’s Roaring Twenties, Lost Generation feel is partially brought on by its own literary theme. Books adorn the walls and many of the drinks, such as the “Harkonnen” and the “Heart of Darkness,” remind patrons that 1022 South is more than just a place to grab a quick drink; it’s the perfect setting for a stimulating conversation or an intimate reunion.
by Carrie Uffindell | photo by Tri Le
With micro-brewing gone mainstream and artisan spirits not far behind, many are turning their attention to hard ciders. Once the most popular beverage in Colonial America, hard cider is making a comeback as one of the fastest growing adult beverage markets in the Northwest. To get your bearings on who’s who and what they’re producing, visit Bushwhacker Cider Pub in Portland, Oregon.
Opened in September 2010 by owners Jeff and Erin Smith, Bushwhacker is located in a renovated space in Southeast Portland’s Brooklyn neighborhood, near downtown. Wooden tables, a large bar, and coolers stocked with bottled ciders along one wall define the pub’s relaxed ambience. A large, overhead door opens to an outdoor seating area, popular during good weather. This is a place where you can chat with friends, choose from a broad variety of excellent ciders and learn a little about this age-old beverage. Hard cider flavors range greatly, offering tastes for nearly every palate.
On tap, Bushwhacker pours six rotating hard ciders—two or three are usually house-made with others being local or national labels. But variety doesn’t stop there. Bushwacker stocks an impressive selection of more than 130 different bottled ciders from all over the world. Weekly events include cider tastings and live music.
Smith first started making cider in his home kitchen eight years ago. After taking two of cider-expert Peter Mitchell’s classes, he was ready to go pro. “I liked hard cider and no one in the Portland area was making it,” Smith says.