Multnomah Whiskey Library

Multnomah Whiskey Library is exactly what its name promises — a downtown Portland room lined floor to ceiling with spirits, where drinks are brought to the table from rolling carts — and it is not the sort of place a non-drinker would think to try. Two things make it worth reconsidering. The first is access. The Library proper works on a membership model with a waiting list and nominations, which puts most people off entirely, but that is only half the building: the ground-floor Green Room takes walk-ins with no membership and no reservation at all. General manager Lani Sickman has put it as directly as anyone could — they take walk-ins every day, they want walk-ins, they love to see them. All spaces are 21 and over.

The second is that the non-alcoholic list is real, and this is a correction to our earlier entry. An older version of the beverage menu carried nothing alcohol-free, and anyone checking would reasonably have concluded a whisky library has nothing for them. The menu was rewritten in April 2026 and now has a printed Mocktails section running six deep. Love at Midnight at $10 is the tropical one — coconut cream, pineapple, lime, orange and demerara. Jungle Flower at $12 puts pineapple and lime against Ghia, the botanical apéritif, with a house falernum. Out of the Woods at $15 is the drink to order if you want something with the weight of an actual cocktail: Everleaf Forest apéritif lengthened with non-alcoholic sparkling wine and lemon, which gives it both bitterness and length. And there are three bottled St. Agrestis Phony Negronis at $12 apiece — the original, the white and the espresso — which is unusual; most bars stock one. Below that sits a soft-drink section done with the same care as everywhere else in the building: Mexican Coca-Cola and Sprite, Fever-Tree tonic and ginger beer, Topo Chico, Steven Smith teas and Proud Mary coffee, both Portland roasters. Non-alcoholic Best Day Electro Lime and Athletic Run Wild are $7 on the beer list.