Double Cross Vodka

I'll quote myself again about vodka: "To call this protean liquor “colorless, odorless, and tasteless” sells it terribly short." I was a serious -- i.e., straight -- vodka drinker years before I got serious about whiskey, and I've been rediscovering the good points of vodka lately.

Like this bottle of Double Cross I was sent a couple years ago when I was working on a vodka story for Mass Beverage Business. It sat on my shelf -- I wasn't reviewing vodkas, just writing about them -- until a few weeks ago, when Cathy and I took her brother Curt out to Uzbekistan (which is just great, BTW, and if you haven't been, go). It's BYO, so we got together a clutch of beers and ciders and two bottles of wine (the chardonnay worked really well; the sauvignon blanc, not so much), and I saw the bottle of Double Cross, and thought, hell, why not? And stuffed it in the freezer around noon to get chilled for the evening.

We started eating. First it was achik-chuck, a delicious traditional tomato salad. Salud! Curt and I had half-ounce shots of vodka. Then the piping hot bread came. Salud! Then some skewers of lamb. Salud! We finished the skewers of lamb. Salud! Cathy's stroganoff came. Salud! Cathy joined us for a shot. Salud! We got pilov -- Salud! -- and more skewers. Salud! We eventually Salud!-ed our way through half the bottle, and Cathy drove home.

And you know? The Double Cross was brilliant. From the very first shot, it was clean, no trace of any nasty solvent flavors; it was well-bodied without being sweet; and it had a faint but distinct graininess to it that was just perfect. Best of all, the little half-ounce shots made an excellent palate refresher between courses. I liked the Double Cross, and after another meal at Uzbekistan, I intend to buy another bottle.

More Clear Spirits

I did the Vodka issue cover story for Massachusetts Beverage Business again, and I remembered and rediscovered the romance of the liquor.

Back in the day, I was a straight-up vodka man.  I’d started swilling vodka mixed with anything sweet, but then I met a Russian girl who challenged me to drink chilled half-ounce shots of Smirnoff with her.  I was hooked.  I never saw her again, but I retained a love for the subtleties of straight vodka. 
There’s not a lot of us.  “1O% of my clients drink it straight,” said Ryan Maloney at Julio’s Liquors, “and I’m probably exaggerating."

I got excited, and I challenged the retailers I was writing for to get excited again as well.

Clear glass and vibrant color; anonymous buzz in a Bloody Mary and teasing subtlety in a ritual glass; faceless Slavic liquor and storied European spirit; bottom shelf rocket fuel, solid reasonable value, and high-priced luxury badge; anesthetic, inspiration, refreshment, amusement, tasty temptation, and effortlessly sophisticated companion to the finest caviar . . . To call this protean liquor “colorless, odorless, and tasteless” sells it terribly short.  If you’ve been pushing it without romance, maybe it’s time to think again about what vodka is, and what it can be.

I'm looking for thimble glasses, and planning a zakuski party.

Suck the Head

Yeah, the day after finishing Pennsylvania Breweries 4 is that kind of day. Adios, amigos!


Seriously: does anyone know where I can get more 50 ml thimble glasses like this? I want real simple ones that I can put ice cold vodka in for a zakuski party I want to do, about two dozen of them. Drop me a line; thanks!

Breaking story...Pernod Ricard sells off glögg brands...

In a shocking move, Pernod Ricard announced that they would sell off almost all the Vin & Spirit brands they purchased just last year. The French family firm, the world's second-largest drinks company, paid kr55 billion (about $8.9 billion) for the Swedish state-owned firm. They will be keeping only one brand and selling off everything else, including Blossa Glögg and 40 brands of wine, like the popular Chill Out brand.



Okay, it's not actually shocking: the one brand they're keeping is Absolut, which was the only reason they bought V&S in the first place. I just saw the story, and I wanted to put the word glögg in a headline. Sorry. Back to work.

Three tastes

Got a strange line-up for you. A beer, a cider, and -- gasp! -- a flavored vodka.

I got a sample of a beer I hadn't had in quite a while, one I remember quite fondly: Bateman's XXXB. Poured it into my Bateman's pint (frosted glass, got it years ago and keep it deep in the cupboard: not an everyday glass!). Looked good, smelled malty good, with a grassy/earthy push of hops. And as I tasted that first sip, it shocked me with how much it tasted just like I remember it. Bateman's is distinctive. Don't know if it's the Maris Otter malt, or the hops, or (most likely) their yeast, but it's unique. It tastes...hmmm. A bit of that grassy/earthy hit, some meatiness, some grain, some caramel. Mostly, though, it tastes like Bateman's. Get some and find out what I mean.

The cider comes from Sam Smith, an organic cider ("Produced from organically grown apples." Duh...). Not a world-shaker, but again, not overly sweet either. Apple flavor, some light tartness, but it's hardly what you'd call complex. It does note that it contains cane sugar as well as apple juice...which may be why it's so simple. Better than the common run of cider, but not in Farnum Hill territory, not even J.K.'s Scrumpy.

And yes, a flavored vodka: Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka. Angela Traver at Buffalo Trace talked about it so excitedly that I let her send me a bottle (this is the woman that talked me into buying a bottle of Old Charter 101, so she's no flake!). I put it off. A couple months. But tonight it was warm, and green smells of wet earth and new grass floated in the door from out back, and I thought, what the hell, why not? Old-fashioned glass, handful of ice, two fingers of Firefly, topped it up with Brita-water. It tasted like sweet tea with vodka in it, of which I drank quite a bit when I was a much younger man. No nasty after-tastes, no strange chemical tastes. I'm thinking it's going to be an easy thing to drink on hot summer nights, especially with even more ice and cold water...but that's about it. Which is probably all it wants to be. God help me.

The Session: It's not beer, and it's not organic, either

Call me unconventional (please, I love it when you do that), but when I read Chris O'Brien's proposal for The Session this month -- "Simply publish a post related to organic beer. " -- I decided to do just that...by posting about a non-organic vodka.

I did a few stories about organic beers in the past year, and mostly what I found is that there's a ton of disagreement about what "organic" means, as Chris points out:

Only beers verified by independent certifiers as meeting the legal organic standards are allowed to bear the USDA Certified Organic logo... Lots of brewers use Certified Organic malt and/or hops but have not had their facilities and processes certified. Legally and in practical fact these beers are not organic and are prohibited from being marketed as organic. But for this Session, it’s up to you to decide what to count as organic. Feel free to comment on beers that someone just tells you are organic, but be aware that just because someone has good intentions and seems trustworthy doesn’t mean that their beer is in fact organic.

I decided to take Chris at his word and sidestep the whole thing -- even though I have some organic beers available, like Pinkus, and Wolaver's, and Peak, that are eminently drinkable and worthy of praise -- to post about something "related to organic beer," a different concept that's been done rather well by McCormick Distilling, a huge outfit in Missouri that you probably haven't heard of before. The only brands they own that I'm really familiar with are Tequila Rose and Wiser's Canadian. But McCormick Vodka is the third-biggest selling domestic vodka in America...so they're doing something right.

This new brand looks right, too: 360 Vodka. 360 is not organic. It's sustainable, it's eco-friendly, it's really pretty neat. The distilling process uses an advanced still that re-captures much of the waste energy (200% more energy efficiently than conventional stills, they claim). The grain is locally grown to cut down on transport energy use. The labels are made from New Leaf paper: 100% post-consumer recycled waste paper (chlorine-free processing), the bottle is 85% recycled glass, 70% post-consumer, the glue on the label is soy-based. The bottle, as you can see in the picture, is a flip-top...and each bottle comes with an attached postage-paid mailer (attached by biodegradable fiber twine) and instructions on how to remove the bail and cap and send it back to McCormick, where they'll wash and re-use them. The sturdy case is all recycled paperstock, with no glue, and as you can see, it looks like a filebox...which is exactly what they advise you to use it for.

It's all pretty impressive, and when I talked to McCormick president Ed Pechar a couple weeks ago for a story, he was quite enthusiastic about it. The more they talked about the idea, he said, the more ideas people came up with. He was quite proud of the still, the most advanced technology they could find (something that's getting a lot of attention from distillers and brewers, by the way: energy-efficiency is going to account for a lot of plant upgrades in the next ten years). The buildings that hold the distillery have been designed to have a minimal carbon footprint, the website even runs on wind-generated power.

"It's not organic," Pechar told me, emphatically. "It is green, and sustainable, and local, and low-impact. Those are things we can do something about."

I'm not saying that organic is not obtainable, or a fantasy, or elitist: I'm actually cooking soup with mostly organic ingredients right now, and we get produce from an organic CSA. But low-impact and sustainable production, green production, is another, important angle.

Of course, the drink is important too. 360 has a clean aroma profile (yes, I know: it's vodka, it's supposed to. I'm a pro, and I used to really like sipping vodka: all vodkas are not equal, and they have distinct aromas if you pay attention), without any of the solvent aromas of cheap crap or the sweet tinge of doctored vodka. It sips smooth, no burn, with a nice, plush texture, and no off-flavors or aromas in the finish. This really is nice...for vodka, I mean: it is what it is. But I like this idea, and the execution is nicely done.