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| Deco Coffee, Silver and Ginger Rums at Local 360 |
Local 360 is a restaurant that prides itself by living up to its name. They serve local food and drink sourced within a 360 mile radius of Seattle. Simple, sustainable and green are admirable goals. Sounds challenging right? Let's consider rum, a spirit historically produced in tropical climates like the Caribbean. A little too far away. What about local rum? Washington State laws have made it nearly impossible to produce rum here due to raw ingredient requirements. This makes serving rum at Local 360 more difficult still. However, and luckily for us, our more craft distillery-friendly neighbor, Oregon, makes rum and pretty good rum at that!
Eastside Distilling, a new small batch distillery located in Portland's historic district (175 miles away) is producing an eye-catching line of rums under the name
Deco, which are already winning awards.
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| Local 360 Tasting Room |
In the back of their restaurant and bar area, a private space decorated with local art and filled with candles awaits us. The swashbuckling rum drinkers who fill the room on this weeknight set a fine example of what is important. That being Rum. Priorities right? Healthy sized tasting samples are poured and several different plates of chef's appetizers are brought out. Time to support local!
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Honey Bee Cocktail with Deco Ginger Rum
Prepared by Paul Ritums |
Greeting cocktails are served. The Honey Bee is refreshing and spirit forward. Deco Ginger Rum's natural ginger flavor holds up well and pairs nicely with honey and soda. Paul Ritums, the bar manager at Local 360, constructed two cocktails exclusively for this event. Let's take a look at the first...
Honey Bee
1.5oz Deco Ginger Rum
0.5oz Spiced Honey Syrup
0.5oz Lemon juice (fresh squeezed)
Honey Cream Soda (top off)
Garnish: Lemon twist
by Paul Ritums
The chef's appetizers didn't last long. It is no secret fresh ingredients taste better and Local 360 isn't shy about it. Combine these morsels with some hand crafted cocktails and it's only a matter of time. In minutes, plate after plate were left empty. I pause and recall the proverbial mention of some people after drinking; that they need some food to soak up all the alcohol. Those who broke bread in The Rum Collective have a different saying; needing some rum to soak up all of this food!!
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| The Rum Collective Tasting |
The tasting commenced with Deco Silver Rum moving on to their Ginger Rum and ending with their Coffee Rum. The
Silver Rum is made from fermented molasses and is the base spirit for their each of their expressions. I am told their
Ginger Rum is made from infusing ginger root for a certain time period. Its taste is not of the overly hot or sweet kind, but captures a rich essence of natural ginger with a spicy finish. Their
Coffee Rum received a Silver Medal at the
2011 San Francisco Spirits Competition and is made by combining a local coffee blend from Arabica beans (a secret recipe from one of Portland's Coffee Roasters) giving it a robust, natural coffee flavored spirit, with caffeine. Seattle's espresso loving palates have no problem appreciating this. To complete the tasting, a bottle of Deco's newly released
Gold Rum was opened and enjoyed.
The closing cocktail of the meeting featured Deco Coffee Rum. All who fancy flavors of coffee, rum, or port and the smooth caressing texture of egg white drinks, were in for a treat. Yum!
Portside Cocktail
1.5oz Deco Coffee Rum
0.25oz Port
0.5oz Orange Simple Syrup
1 Egg white
Garnish: 3 espresso beans
Finish: Flaming oils of orange peal over surface
by Paul Ritums
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Portside Cocktail with Deco Coffee Rum
Prepared by Paul Ritums |
One More Please!
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Portside Cocktail with Deco Coffee Rum
Prepared by Paul Ritums |
Cheers to Paul Ritums & Local 360 for their hospitality and dedication to locally sourced, quality food and great cocktails!
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