About a year, ago, Jim Bendis, owner of the alliterative Bendistillery in Bend, Oregon, decided to open up a tasting room outside his distillery, since Oregon law allowed him to maintain tasting rooms both at his distillery and at one other location. Bendis thought that the best way to present his gins and vodkas was iat a place that offered mixed drinks. So in downtown Bend, the Bendistillery Sampling Room was born, the first off-premise distillery “gin bar” in Oregon and maybe in the entire U.S.
Bendis makes four products: Desert Juniper Gin, Cascade Mountain Gin, Crater Lake Vodka, and Hazelnut Espresso Vodka. He drew up a list of some 30 different drinks for his new location. But the customer’s overwhelming choice was the martini.
“We’re a martini bar,” Bendis says. “We sell 400 martinis a night on a busy weekend.”
The sampling room’s popularity may have been too much of a good thing. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission recently shook things up a bit by deciding that Bendis had to offer food at his downtown location as well. What’s more, Oregon’s Tied House laws mandated that once he did, he could no longer sell his own distilled products exclusively.
Bendis was stirred to action, and discovered a way around that law, courtesy of Oregon’s brewing industry. He found that state tied house laws don’t apply to brewpubs. If he made a malt beverage product, he could continue to offer only his own spirits.
“We’ve had to do it backwards here,” says Bendis, who once swore he would never return to the restaurant business. Now he’s built a kitchen, hired a chef, and jokes about calling his beer-to-be “Regulation Ale.”
“In a way, it’s probably a good thing. It should help us sell more of our own stuff,” Bendis muses. “We’re blazing a trial here,” adds Alan Dietrich, the distillery’s sales manager. “But nobody knows where it’s going.”
Bendistillery Sampling Room
852 Brook St.
Bend, OR
(541) 388-6868
