TravelWorld International Magazine Summer 2024

42
Expensive Vodka -
Super Premium or Snake Oil?
When is a Shot of Vodka Worth $50, $100 or $1,000?
Do Bottles Make Booze Better?
I know people - friends, family, casual
acquaintances - who have made a
cult out of tasting, sipping, guzzling,
and cooking with vodka. I never
understood it. I mean after all – in
most cases it’s just straight-grain
alcohol diluted to proof - usually
around 80 proof (40 percent alcohol).
In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol,
Firearms, and Tobacco (BATF)
originally defined it as an alcoholic
beverage “without distinctive
character, aroma, or taste.”
My brother used to rave about his
vodka spaghetti sauce recipe. It was
all the rage. I scoffed. Like, why
bother? If vodka is just clear alcohol
diluted to proof – and you cook
the sauce long enough to burn the
alcohol off, all you are left with is
the water used to dilute it in the first
place. Makes sense, doesn’t it? It turns
out I was wrong. Science suggests
that alcohol can extract compounds
that are not soluble in water or fat –
like esters and terpenes. Esters give
tomatoes their aroma and terpenes
give them their taste. Arguably,
cooking with alcohol breaks down the
compounds creating a richer, more
intense flavor.
Story and Photos by Mike Howard
And it’s not just pasta sauce. It
turns out that adding vodka to
marinade breaks down the collagen
in meat, releasing natural flavors and
tenderizing tougher cuts of meat. You
can even substitute vodka for water
in pie dough recipes for a flakier,
more tender crust.
Okay, fine. So, I was wrong. But the
fact remains that the very qualities
of vodka that generate these culinary
hacks – colorless, all but odorless,
and tasteless (other than a slight
alcohol burn), render it unsuitable
for bon vivant indulgences. Special
tumblers, swirling, sniffing, spitting,
clearing the palate, and repeating
the process, all the while waxing
poetic over delicate all-but intangible
nuances of “nose,” “mouth-feel,” or
“bouquet” are of dubious utility.
Brandys, Bourbons, Scotches,
Whiskeys, and Irish Malts can
demand princely prices. But they all
have the advantage of being aged in
barrels and casks of various woods,
under various charring processes,
and being aged for anywhere from
five to twenty-five years – even
longer.
Not so vodka.
In May of 2020, the BATF revised
their definition of vodka. “Vodka
is neutral spirits which may be
treated with up to two grams per
liter of sugar and up to one gram
per liter of citric acid.” But the
benefits of aging in charred barrels
are out. Not if you want to call it
vodka. “Products to be labeled as
vodka may not be aged or stored
in wood barrels at any time except
when stored in paraffin-lined wood
barrels and labeled as bottled in
bond. The revision also stipulates
that: “Vodka treated and filtered
with not less than one ounce of
activated carbon or activated
charcoal per 100 wine gallons of
spirits may be labeled as ‘charcoal
filtered.’”
When I think about “original”
vodka, I think potatoes. But even
back in the earlies, from Russia
to Poland, and Latvia to Finland,
distillers used what they had –
potatoes, wheat, rye, even corn.
Nowadays mash can even contain
sugar cane or rice
AAll properly functioning stills
produce a high-proof clear alcohol.
If it’s from potatoes or wheat or rye
or corn or sugar cane or rice – even
from pears or apples or cherries or
grapes, I suspect you could call it
“vodka.” You could also call it rum,
or brandy, or “unaged whisky,” but
until it is barreled, as far as I’m
concerned? It’s all just fresh-fromthe-still
white-lightning moonshine.
So, what about all these high-priced
designer vodkas that seem to be all
the rage nowadays? Sure, they are
out there. There is Eye of the Dragon
vodka which costs $5.5 million;
Billionaire Vodka, at $3.75 million;
and Russo-Baltique vodka at $1.3
million (yep MILLION). Russo-
Baltique is bottled in 30mm-thick
bullet-proof glass and its stopper is
white and yellow gold, encrusted
with diamonds.
You could buy a bottle of Absolut
Black Pinstripe Crystal for $10,000
in hand-blown and hand-cut crystal
(they’ll throw in a pinstriped bag
and two matching crystal tumblers).
There’s no shortage of otherwise
non-descript vodkas in fancy bottles
that can set you back thousands
of dollars. Belver Bears Belvedere
can sell for $7,200, Oval Swarovski
Crystal for $6,922, Stoli Elit
Himalayan for $3,000, and Swarovski
Alizé for $2,000. Non-black Absolut
Pinstripe can be had for around
$1,500.
Even excluding the stunts of bottling
unaged alcohol in gem-studded,
gold-encrusted, hand-blown limitededition
decanters, vodka can be dear.
You can pay $130 for Chopin Family
Reserve, $130 for Beluga Noble Gold,
$62 for Crystal Head, or $58 for
Boyd & Blair Potato Vodka.
But should you?
Depending upon store markups and
state taxes, Beluga Noble Export is
a comparative bargain at $50. Grey
Goose can weigh in at $40, Tito’s
Handmade at around $24, and Ketel
One at $23 (per 750 ml bottle).
Come on. It’s only VODKA.
I can find 750 ml bottles of vodka
at discount markets for $7, and
sometimes, 1.75 L bottles for $11.
They might not be in fancy flint glass
decanters, but those plastic jugs are
recyclable.
Twenty-five years back, McCormick,
one of America’s oldest known
continuously operating distilleries,
was accused of being involved in a
smuggling operation shipping pure
grain alcohol to Russia. Tinted blue,
and exported as “cleaning solvent,” the
dye was cooked out “on the other end,”
diluted to proof (one gallon of 192
proof ethyl alcohol yields 2.5 gallons
at 80 proof), resold and re-marketed
as vodka. Imagine buying “genuine”
Russian vodka – maybe Krystal,
or Stolichnaya, or any number of
“authentic” Eastern bloc brand names,
and mooning over the “mouth feel,” or
“nose,” or delicate caramel, vanilla, or
citrus notes - only to read about ethyl
alcohol “cleaning solvent” smuggling
scams.
I recently hosted a blind vodka-tasting
tournament with some chums and
acquaintances. Offerings ran the
gamut from corn, rice, rye, potato,
sugarcane, and wheat-based “vodkas.”
For good measure, I included a can of
Still House clear corn whiskey, and a
disguised bottle of Everclear 190 proof
grain alcohol, diluted with plain tap
water to 80 proof.
For mouthfeel, nose, palate, and finish?
The Everclear won. Hands down.
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