Hi-Wheel Wine & Mead Tasting Room Preview

This Thursday October 2 Hi-Wheel Wine & Mead is having a soft opening for their Tasting Room, a welcome addition to the Woodlawn neighborhood sharing a building with Tamale Boy on NE Dekum. Oddly, Hi-Wheel, atleast to begin with, does not produce any wine or mead. Say what? Their product is nicknamed "Fizzy Wines" by owner Ken Bonin Jr.

Hi-Wheel launched a few months back at Bushwhacker Cidery and The Beermongers with just a handful of 1/6 barrels and hand bottled 500ml bottles that have been mostly snapped up. Though they will release meads in the future the main lineup is of fermented and carbonated citrus fruit juices. A few kegs of their Habanero Lime flavor have been scene around town and made me take notice of their delicious and refreshing new product.

We hope to present a more in-depth preview of the final Hi-Wheel tasting room and production space in the next few weeks but here is what we found on a recent visit to the in-construction space.

• Currently Ken Bonin Jr. is brewing on a nano scale in 50 gallon increments at his house. He hopes to soon expand and move to the new production space/tasting room.

• The Tasting Room will have 10 taps with 4-6 of them dedicated to their house brands of fizzy wine and mead with 2 guest cider taps and a few local beers as well.

• The primary lineup of Hi-Wheel flavors are Ruby Grapefruit, Ginger Lemon, Lavender Lemon and Lime Habanero. They made a special Peach version of their Lemon for the upcoming Peche Fest on October 11th!

Tasting Room opens at 5pm Today.

Hi-Wheel Wine & Mead
6719 NE 18th Ave
Portland, Ore. 97211

The Tasting Room will be open Noon to 9ish Thursday through Sunday. Food is available from Tamale Boy and they have a big patio.

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