Anybody afraid of Capitol Hill becoming part of one big Seattle monoculture should know — it’s too late. There is already a food+drink continuum between Ballard and Capitol Hill. Add another. Heritage Distilling, lined up to open a new “tasting room, retail store and Cask Club” on the backside of Pike/Pine in the Central Agency building, is mirroring the effort with a NW Market St. doppelganger also planned to open later this year.
CHS included the Hill Heritage project on our roster of 20+ Capitol Hill bars and restaurants to look forward to in 2018 though its space has been partially overhauled and used as an events space since the Gig Harbor-based company took over the former sandwich shop space in the restored auto row-era building also home to Lark.
(Image: Heritage Distilling)
In 2016, Heritage owner and master distiller Justin Stiefel told CHS the project will be “doing everything you would expect distillery to do – distillation in site, barrel aging, blending. Flavoring and bottling,” and joining Sun Liquor and OOLA as the lone creators of Capitol Hill spirits. In the time since, Sun moved its distilling operations off the Hill.
Originally planned to open in “early 2017,” the Capitol Hill Heritage location has been busy acquiring state and federal permits. The company has also been busy with another new project. The Ballard-Capitol Hill food+drink continuum also extends all the way to tiny Rosyln, Washington where Heritage just built a 10,000-square-foot distillery.
When it opens this spring, the Heritage shop will add a new stop on your Capitol Hill-brewed and distilled beer and spirits tour including neighboring Optimism, Redhook, Elysian, OOLA, and tiny Outer Planet on 12th Ave.
On the flipside, not everything that works out on the Hill also works in Ballard. Skillet closed its NW 56th St. location to start 2018.
Friday, meanwhile, further connects Ballard and Capitol Hill by way of the stomach. The Capitol Hill Salt and Straw will open — and, surely, will have a line — at Pike and Summit at 11 AM following its Ballard debut last week.
Heritage Distilling’s Capitol Hill tasting room is planned to open this spring at 1201 10th Ave inside the Central Agency Building. You can learn more at heritagedistilling.com.
PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
