Keeps the Drinking Local
BY CARRIE HAVRANEK | PHOTOS BY EMMA SYLVESTER
IF YOU LOVE LOCAL LIBATIONS, you’ll want to check out Presley’s Coc ktail Bar. It’s a bar, but with a twist: Their pours bear some Pennsylvania pride.
That’s because Presley’s is housed in Cellar Beast Winery’s downtown Easton tasting room and their alcohol license limits the winery’s partners—CJ Moyer, Ryan Moran and Jean Carlos Jimenez—to serving wine, beer, and spirits from Pennsylvania producers. But they’ve flipped the concept entirely and transformed the tasting room into a cozy, dimly lit upscale dive bar. (We know that sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s not.)
“We haven’t seen a good in-between example of a dive bar and a restaurant,” says Moyer. “We wanted to create a space that felt elevated and eclectic.”
Presley’s is an outgrowth of Moyer’s mobile cocktail business of the same name, but with this brick-and-mortar iteration, your cocktails may feature Bluecoat Gin, Stateside vodka (like the Keystone), or Resurgent’s botanical whiskeys. Your wine is definitely from Cellar Beast—and they’ll have special reserve wines that aren’t available anywhere else. And about the beer: The default is Yuengling lager, a Commonwealth classic, but they’ll rotate through craft brews, too.
They’re also required to serve food, but there’s no kitchen. Instead, Uncrustables and potato chips are unironically offered for purchase; you can classy up the latter with some caviar, too, if you like.
Now, about those drinks. The menu brings three vibes: Holler (basic drinks with vodka, gin, etc.) from $5; Classics (think Old Fashioned, Manhattan, Cosmopolitan, Whiskey Sour), $8–$13; and Custom cocktails, $12–$15, which involve more ingredients and a slightly more sophisticated approach.
“It’s a little piece of us and our style of cocktails,” says Moyer.
Presley’s Cocktail Bar
159 Northampton St., Easton
@presleysbar on Instagram
