The Green Dragon in Portland, Oregon. Photo: mrzarquon/Flickr

A weekly look at the draft selection in beer-friendly bars across the country.

According to the past two weeks' worth of WOT, Portland, Ore., might be the most neglected What's On Tap city. And what neglect! Portland has regularly been regarded as one of America's top beer towns, snagging top honors in a recent online poll that beer legend Charlie Papazian put together.

This week, Portland's Green Dragon gets some much deserved attention. It was named after Boston's original Green Dragon Tavern, which was dubbed "the headquarters of the Revolution" due to the proclivity of many rabble-rousing Colonial American groups to congregate there. Proprietors of this modern Oregonian iteration promote relaxation, not rebellion, with a great draft selection that includes a number of hard to find brews, a chill atmosphere and a large selection of bar games.

Last year, the Green Dragon was purchased by Rogue Ales, but that hasn't changed its commitment to offering a unique range of beers. Assistant Manager Samantha Sugar (who calls herself the "Beer Gazelle") tells us the Dragon still aims for that "neighborhood bar appeal" with an always rotating selection of beers.

When I was a teenager, George Orwell's 1984 was my favorite book, both for its writing, which I thought was superb, and for its depressing viewpoint, which beautifully dovetailed with my own adolescent angst. One of my favorite parts was Orwell's description of the effects of "Victory Gin," the official hard liquor of English Socialism:

Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes. The stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful.

When I first tried cheap tequila, I came to the conclusion that it was Orwell's famed Victory Gin. Oily, hard to swallow, and packing a wallop, it was also among the most popular tipples in the mid 1980's, far outstripping gin, which seemed pale and weak by comparison. If tequila was a hard whack with a rubber club, gin was a sip of chilled perfume.

There was a brief period, somewhere around my sophomore year in college, when I drank a lot of Captain Morgan spiced rum. Looking back, it's not hard to see why I fell in love with the stuff: I've always been a big fan of root beer and cream soda, and Captain Morgan was like an alcoholic cross between mulled cider and cake frosting. It was sweet and spicy, and when I mixed it with cola, it tasted like a cream soda with overtones of lighter fluid.

After about a year, the love affair was over. Part of this was the fact that my tastes had wandered away from rum, and part was the fact that Captain Morgan's had gone from refreshingly tasty to cloyingly sweet. Mostly, I think, I had learned to enjoy the flavor of liquor and was no longer interested in drowning it under a mass of sugar and spice. With tears in my eyes, I bid farewell to the Captain and shifted my focus to other shores.

My thoughts returned to the Captain recently when I tried Rogue Spirits' Hazelnut Spice Rum. The "spiced rum" moniker, combined with the fact that Edward Teach is prominently featured on the bottle, led me to anticipate an aggressively seasoned, supersweet flavor; instead, I found a delicate, mild rum with a hint of vanilla, the slightest touch of spice, and the smooth, rounded flavor of hazelnuts. To put it mildly, this was a whole other ball game.

Having now tried and retried the Rogue rum, I don't really know how to characterize it. My tastes tend toward golden rums, notably Appletons Estate, and Rogue seems mild, almost delicate by comparison. Moreover, most of the hazelnut-flavored tipples that I've consumed have been hyper-sweetened, artificial, and aggressively nutty. Rogue, on the other hand, is subtle and sly, with a flavor that tastes very natural. It's odd to describe a flavored rum as "pure," but that's a pretty good description of this spirit. Basically, it's a spiced rum for grownups, as oxymoronic as that may sound.

The downside of Rogue's delicacy is that I could very easily see the flavor getting drowned out by mixers. The distillers suggest combining it with buttershot liqueur for a "butternut," or mixing a "fuzzy nuts" with Irish cream and Amaretto. While these sound interesting, I find it hard to imagine the flavor of this rum remaining intact when combined with stronger-tasting additives. Personally, I think I'm going to stick to the occasional shot on the rocks, slowly sipped to enjoy the complex blend of flavors!

Santa's Butt Winter Porter is just too naughty for Maine. The state's Bureau of Liquor Enforcement has barred Shelton Brothers from selling the beer, which sports an image of the jolly old elf hoisting a brew as he checks his list. The butt in the name is a reference to both Santa's rear and to the barrel he's perched on. Once upon a time in England brewers used large barrels called butts to store beer.

With the help of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, Shelton has sued the state agency on the grounds that not approving its label application violates the First Amendment by censoring artistic expression. The state, for its part, says that it's in the right because showing Saint Nick on a beer label might encourage the wee ones to take to the bottle.

I'm not sure I buy the state's argument. For one thing, there are many winter beers with labels that show Santa Claus. You'd think there would be legions of preteen dipsomaniacs by now. I wonder if Rogue is allowed to sell its Santa's Private Reserve in Maine.