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When vodka makers talk about purity, about how many times they distill and filter their spirit, what they usually don’t tell you is why they do it. Sure, they talk about smoothness, softness, brilliance, maybe cleanness, or crispness, but the way those qualities are achieved is by removing every substance that might produce flavor, aroma or color.
The goal is a neutral spirit, pure alcohol or its practical equivalent, about 95%. Achieving a drink that pure was the goal of distillers for centuries. It was almost impossible before the 19th century. Today, it’s easy.
That’s why there are so many different vodkas. It’s very easy to make, so easy and all so similar that most of the companies that sell vodka don’t even make it themselves. They leave that to a few specialists, who do it on a massive scale. The non-distiller producer may then do some filtering or other processing before bottling.
So all vodka is similar, but not the same. The worst, cheapest vodka tastes like alcohol, which is to say it tastes and smells like a chemical solvent. The best, most expensive vodka is virtually odorless and tastes like water.
It costs only a small amount more money to make a vodka that tastes a lot better, so good vodkas don’t have to cost four or five times as much as cheap ones, but they generally do.
That’s changing.
With vodka so easy to make, the business is crazy competitive. Everybody has a gimmick. The writer Terry Sullivan once suggested that a good one might be to filter it through the hair of 1,000 Polish virgins. Maybe it was 10,000.
Not far off is Diaka Vodka, which is filtered through diamonds and costs $100 a bottle.
But here’s another gimmick, make a cheap vodka that tastes like an expensive one.
That is today’s topic.
The cheapest 750ml bottle of vodka you can find at Binny’s or Sam’s is about $6. The cheapest big name premium vodkas, like Absolut and Finlandia, are about $18. Stoli is $20. Can we do better? Can we get premium vodka taste and aroma for less than $18-$20?
Most important of all, both products deliver.
The Sobieski story illustrates why these premium value vodkas are becoming available now. A big vodka company like Belvedere, which competes in the $25-$30 segment with its Belvedere brand, likes those high profits but also hates to see somebody else get that $11 sale. So it brings in another one of its brands through a separate but wholly-owned importer.
Belvedere is a French company but most of its vodka is distilled in Poland, much of it for the domestic Polish market, so they make a lot of vodka. Is $11 Sobieski the same as $27 Belvedere? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s not the point. Sobieski is an inexpensive vodka that performs like the high-priced ones.
If that word “imported” on the label doesn’t matter to you, Smirnoff is $13. The blind tasting it won is getting a bit shopworn, but it was the New York Times. Perhaps more persuasive is the fact that it remains the world’s best-selling vodka.
Skyy, also American-made, manages even to have a little cachet at a mere $15 a bottle. It’s arguably cooler than Absolut and three bucks cheaper. Also at $15, Frïs, which is imported from Denmark
If it’s important to you to know what you are drinking and where it was made, then for just $19 you can get a bottle of Rain Vodka. Every drop is made from scratch at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky, using organic white corn grown on a single farm in southern Illinois. Cool looking bottle too.
For more info: The biggest vodka merchants in Chicagoland are Sam's Wines and Spirits, and Binny's Beverage Depot. Sam's now has four stores, Binny's has about 50. However, just about any decent-sized liquor store should have all of the vodkas named here.
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- (Buy) Binny's Beverage Depot (21 locations)
- (Drink) Clark Street Ale House, 742 N. Clark
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- (Drink) Stanley's, Lincoln-Armitage-Sedgwick
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- (Drink) The Violet Hour
- Why?
- American Distilling Institute
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- Bourbon Enthusiast
- The Chuck Cowdery Blog
- Distilled Spirits Council of the United States
- F. Paul Pacult’s Spirit Journal
- Made and Bottled in Kentucky
- Malt Advocate
- The Ministry of Rum
- Rum Pundit
- Scotch Whisky Association
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- Tequila Regulatory Council (it's in Spanish)
- Viva Tequila
- WHISKY Magazine
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