ich bin ein auslander

Went on a vodka tasting last night. Now, I’m a huge fan of Vodka, but generally, I prefer it mixed with something… I generally don’t sit down and drink it straight up, unless I’m already three sheets to the wind. Nevertheless, I went ahead and did it, for life, liberty, and the pursuit of drunkenness. Or something to that effect.

So we headed down to Voda (russian for “water of life”) in Santa Monica, a pretty high-end vodka bar. Menu includes caviar, oysters, and about 100 different types of vodka. The whole thing was arranged by Simon. Simon has the best job in the world - he decides what he’d like to do for fun, tells people he writes and edits a magazine, then they let him (and a few of his friends) do it for free in exchange for a nice article.

Vodka is actually pretty nasty stuff… drinking small thimblefuls of about 25 or 30 neat vodkas, we found ourselves relying on two descriptive phrases - “fucking nasty” or “not nearly so bad”. I won’t do a deep analysis or list everything we tried - you’ll just have to read Simon’s article for that - but I’ll give you my recommendations.

First off, Absolute is really just total crap. Brilliant marketing campaign, to be sure, but in a side by side taste comparison, absolutely horrible. $5 bottles made from old potatoes in the Ozarks tasted better than the king of grocery store vodkas. Stolichnaya is by far the best garden variety, mid-level vodka out there… and they’re flavored Vodkas are superb as well. I particularly liked the Coffee infused brand, which isn’t even listed on their website… curious.

Speaking of flavored vodkas - this was really impressive. Check out Vincent Van Gogh Vodkas if you ever see them. I’ve decided the Dutch Chocolate flavor is my favorite vodka in the world; we also tried the standard (pretty good) and Wild Apple. The smell and taste for their flavored vodkas were really incredible.

Let’s wrap it up with the best of the best - for the budget vodka shopper, I liked Fris, which just inched out Skyy in terms of taste… and my favorite vodka? I actually preferred Belvedere over the bartender’s - and everyone else at the table - pick, Brilliant. So try them both yourself and let me know.

Class dismissed.

One final note - this was actually a really great way to go drinking. Much more fun than just sitting at a bar and getting wasted… got to taste a bunch of different things, learn a little bit about the history and marketing and whatnot (assuming you get a knowledgable bartender), plenty of discussion and arguing with your friends, and a pleasant buzz without getting sloppy. Of course, I was doubling up on everything since Wendy would take the tiniest sip and slide the shot over my way, but still… no headache today!

Going to have to find more of these - apparently, a lot of bars do them fairly often for different things… I want to do a gin tasting!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 19th, 2002 at 11:05 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.