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2425 SE 35th Place, 503-208-2061, sewinecollective.com. 4-9 pm Monday, 4-10 pm Wednesday-Thursday, 4-11 pm Friday, 1-11 pm Saturday, 1-9 pm Sunday Happy hour 4-6 pm Monday-Friday, 1-6 pm Saturday-Sunday: $2 off all glass pours and carafes, $6 food specials.
Established: September 2012
Portland wine bars are now required to prove they're no longer the province of the moneyed leisure class, and Southeast Wine Collective has a lot do with it. Rather than lavish their space in bougie appointments aimed at titillating oenophiles who use "summer" as a verb, owners Kate Norris and Tom Monroe converted a corner of their commissary winemaking warehouse into a casual environment where a layperson can enjoy wine that was made just 30 feet away. The western wall is a gallery of clippings from wine and travel magazines praising the duo for stoking the excitement around Willamette Valley wine—much of which is made in-house and available from the "Our Collective" section of the menu—while the eastern end features a massive window made all the more photogenic by air plants, filament bulbs and a bench seat with a Pendleton cushion. A practical approach is to select one of six flights, which run between $12 and $18 and include three short pours based on themes like small-production pinots noirs, recent releases from the collective, and the "Founders Flight," which boasts a pair of excellent gamays noirs from Norris and Monroe's own Division Wines imprint. The reds pair well with an assortment of $6 happy-hour snacks made onsite by chef Althea Grey Potter, which includes a deviled-egg flight and an impossibly rich chicken liver mousse.