Drank: Apple and Cinnamon Vodka (Wild Roots)

By Matthew Korfhage

The world of “infused” vodkas is an awful place—a wasteland of rocket-fuel liquors spruced with car-freshener aromas. But Portland’s Wild Roots is one of the few liquor makers to use real fruit, infusing a mash into quintuple-distilled vodka from Oregon’s Bendistillery. At its newly installed tasting room on Distillery Row, Wild Roots (135 NE 6th Ave., 971-254-4617, wildrootsvodka.com) is pouring its original marionberry and raspberry infusions, each with a pound of local berries in every bottle. But it’s the new apple-cinnamon flavor that you should stop in for. While both berry liquors are a beautiful novelty act, so pungent with fruit they’re like alcoholic jam, their flavor becomes overpowering even mixed with soda. The cinnamon and apple come off as much more subtle, less sugary, cleaner on the palate, and without lingering stickiness. Mix it with a Cock ’n Bull ginger beer as they do in the tasting room, and you have a fine, sneakily alcoholic summer refresher. Recommended. 

WWeek 2015

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