Cashmere: Old meets new in modern 'Mayberry'

October 8, 2011 by Carol Pucci in The Seattle Times Travel

The pioneer town of Cashmere in Central Washington is best known for Aplets and Cotlets, but there's much more to explore including new wine-tasting rooms, a distillery and an old-fashioned cider mill.

Stroll along the streets in the Central Washington town of Cashmere, and it won't be long before you pick up the scent of sugar and fruit coming from the kitchens of Liberty Orchards, a storefront factory known for jellied confections called Aplets and Cotlets.

That is, unless you wander instead into the Mission District, and poke around inside an old fruit-packing warehouse. There you might catch a whiff of corn whiskey or roasted coffee while shopping for vintage salt and pepper shakers and sampling local wines.

Tucked away along the Wenatchee River off a busy highway just east of the Bavarian -themed town of Leavenworth, Cashmere combines a bit of Mayberry — "The "Andy Griffith Show's" neat-as-a-pin slice of small-town Americana — with a sprinkling of retro cool.

New wine bars and cafes share the town with family-owned bakeries, a hardware store and a 99-year-old pharmacy, the kinds of businesses replaced by big-box stores in other communities.

"Everyone spends about a day to a day-and-a-half in Leavenworth, and then they ask themselves, 'What else is there to do?,' " said Christy Pease, owner of Junkyard Gypsy's 2nd Hand Bargain Oasis, a Mission District shop filled with vintage furniture and collectibles. "So Cashmere is starting to grow."

At the distillery and tasting room It's Five O'Clock Somewhere, Colin Levi and his partner, Eric Lunstrum, offer samples of their Block & Tackle moonshine, a corn whiskey they make in a German copper still from corn grown in Quincy. For fall, the pair plan to make brandies distilled from local cherries and Yakima grapes.