When you want to enjoy a well-crafted beer, wine, meat or cheese, there aren’t many places to go, and fewer where you can get them all at the same place. Crafted & Cured, a local shop where customers can try a variety of specialty meats, artisanal cheeses, and craft beer wine and champagne all under one roof.
What drew owners Christian Alvarez and Andrew Routson to set up shop in the Dayton area was their acquisition of the Dietz building at 531 Wayne Avenue, a historic Dayton locale where John C. Dietz housed his apothecary shop.
With the rich history of the building, they brought something equally unique to rest.
“The main concept was to have an elegant place to come and relax,” Routson said, “almost a lounge kind of a feel, whereas every other alcohol destination is just that. You are going there to consume alcohol and forget the night. We wanted a little more upscale.”
In terms of beer, there is a wide selection of beverages in their 60 tap growler fill station, with 36 rotating beers, eight ciders, eight meads, and six sours. There is also a retail beer wall, in which customers can select purchase a six-pack, a four-pack and single bottles of local, coast to coast, or import beer. Customers can even create their own six or four pack and have a bottle chilled if they wish to drink it in-house.
Crafted & Cured has a variety of wines and champagnes all coming from small estates on a national and international scale, many of which make wines and champagnes with grapes coming from their own vineyards. Customers can purchase wine and champagne by the glass and bottle.
The meat and cheese found here are made with the same care and precision. Customers can create boards with selections of meat, cheese, or a combination of both with accoutrements such as oils, vinegars, locally made honeys and specialty jams. The meat is hand carved when ordered and can be enjoyed in-house, for catering, or at home.
Many of these services offered at Crafted & Cured are not easy to find in the local area, or even outside of Dayton.
“We like to get things that are small batch or unique when it comes to cheese and meat,” Alvarez said. “We always have two bone in ham options, whether that is a serrano or an iberico, and we hand carve those, which is unique to the area. No one else is doing that. The closest place would be chicago, if you are looking for a ham bar where you would find they are doing things like that.”
The product that Alvarez and Routson sell feeds directly into their passion for high quality, well crafted food and drink.
“All the hard work that goes into making this stuff and the passion that goes into it, it’s kind of the same thing, we’re passionate about trying to share that with people It’s not just a piece of cheese,” Alvarez said. “It took someone a long time to get the milk for this, to properly age it. It’s not an assembly line, where it’s all punched out.”
Crafted & Cured is part of a growing concept with plans to extend its market and its merchandise. For more information, students can visit their website at craftedncured.com.
