Stupid Booze Post

J

justme

homo economicus
#1
#1
There's a million better forums for it, but I don't post there...

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here, but Bluecoat gin is really very good. Even if I could get Citadelle from the PLCB, I'm not sure I would buy one over the other consistently. They are different gins, to be sure, and there's room in my heart and on my shelf for both. The former is more floral and less herbal, I think, than the latter.

Talking Pennsylvania white liquor, Boyd and Blair (available somewhere in Manhattan) is the first vodka I've found that I actually want to drink with just a chill on it. It actually has quite a bit of flavor and I find it very tasty. For mixing, I turn to Tito's homemade in deference of my Texan nationality.

Finally, I recently acquired a bottle of Root. It's not for everyone, but I've found it makes a wonderful digestive. It's complex, layered, and I think it's delicious although some people might find it somewhat cloying.

It's an exciting time for American spirits, I think.
 
D

daengman

#2
#2
justme said:
There's a million better forums for it, but I don't post there...

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here, but Bluecoat gin is really very good. Even if I could get Citadelle from the PLCB, I'm not sure I would buy one over the other consistently. They are different gins, to be sure, and there's room in my heart and on my shelf for both. The former is more floral and less herbal, I think, than the latter.

Talking Pennsylvania white liquor, Boyd and Blair (available somewhere in Manhattan) is the first vodka I've found that I actually want to drink with just a chill on it. It actually has quite a bit of flavor and I find it very tasty. For mixing, I turn to Tito's homemade in deference of my Texan nationality.

Finally, I recently acquired a bottle of Root. It's not for everyone, but I've found it makes a wonderful digestive. It's complex, layered, and I think it's delicious although some people might find it somewhat cloying.

It's an exciting time for American spirits, I think.
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He's right! That is a stupid booze post.
 
J

justlooking

#3
#3
Oh come on. That was a GREAT booze post.

Justme, you're the first person I know that's tried Bluecoat. I can't wait to.

Have you had the new Ransom Old Tom Gin from somewhere in the Pacific Northwest? It's really great.
 
J

justme

homo economicus
#5
#5
I have not tried the Ransom, but if I see it I will. Living in PA does have some advantages; we've had the Bluecoat for close to 18 months now.

mkjms - Nothing is wrong with Sapphire if that's what you prefer. I actually quite like it in a martini. On the other hand, I drink gin and tonic far, far more often than I bother with martinis. For GnT's, I generally prefer a gin in which the juniper is a little more nuanced than it is with Sapphire.

There are also a number of gin-based cocktails that the mixology craze has produced. Some are actually quite good, although I'd never bother to stock the thousands of ingredients that you need to make them. Sometimes it's interesting to see how different gins play out in the different cocktails.

Six months ago I would have said gin, unlike vodka, has a lot of flavor to it. There are a ton of decisions made by the distiller related to the amounts of botanicals that they use which will change the final profile of the gin will be. Thus any two gins can vary wildly in taste. It's not simply a matter of finding the "best" one since one might be better in one situation while a second better in a different application. Gin is much more like whisk(e)y in this regard. There are rewards to trying different kinds. Vodka, I would have said, is more about finding the least amount of flavor so that you could add it to other things without mucking up their flavor. Thus people can have arguments about which vodka is "best" by defining best to be least flavorful.

Boyd and Blair has sort of made me see the light, though. Vodka really can have a very desirable flavor and a distiller can find a formula that produces something that tastes good, rather than is simply inoffensive.




Really, though, my overarching point was the last thing I said. The United States is becoming a real hot spot for new, exciting, liquor. There are a number of bottles that I've read about from small production bitters to exotic liquors that I'd really like to try, but availability is an issue with these local producers. In fact the only reason I know about them at all is from casual browsing of magazines like Wine in Spirits that I do when I'm in a bookstore.

A lot of the classic liquors were formulated to 18th and 19th century European palates. What those people love, I find to be not very good. What's great about these newer bottles is that they are crafted by contemporary American tastes from people that often eat the same way I do*. So I think it's natural to expect that they will better reflect my tastes.


* - as opposed to the people responsible for things like 99 bananas, Hypnotique, Fire and Ice and so on. Clearly these beverages are as successful as they are ubiquitous, but they are for a different taste than mine. Trying to avoid sounding too snobby, the stuff I'm talking about is a lot more subtle and complex and much closer to what I want to drink then the aforementioned college mixers.
 
M

Monk

#6
#6
I thought that the whole point of vodka was that it should be, essentially, colorless and flavorless? Some are smoother than others, but when we start to talk about the "flavor" of a particular vodka, it's sort of besides the point.

When I drink it chilled with a little lime I prefer Belvedere, mostly because it is so smooth. It's fermented using wheat. Grey Goose is fermented using grapes (a friend of mine was on a cognac tour in France and visited their factory; a lot of the wine and cognac producers in the area resent their success, because the fermenting time is much shorter for vodka than cognac). I used to think that all vodka was made using fermented potatoes -- shows you how little I know about all of this.
 
F

franca

<color=pink>Silver</color>
#7
#7
I disagree. Some vodkas really do have flavor. It's subtle, but it's there. My personal favorite is Luksusowa, which happens to made from potatoes.
 
R

RuffToy

#8
#8
Monk said:
...I used to think that all vodka was made using fermented potatoes -- shows you how little I know about all of this.
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Try Imperia. Imperia uses winter wheat from the black soil of the Russian Steppes,distilled eight times and blended with the glacial waters from Lake Lagoda. The liquid is then filtered twice through charcoal and twice again through quartz crystals from the Ural Mountains. The Imperia formula is based on Dmitri Mendeleev's original formula, decreed by Czar Alexander III in 1894 as "The Standard of Vodka."
 
J

justme

homo economicus
#9
#9
Monk said:
I thought that the whole point of vodka was that it should be, essentially, colorless and flavorless? Some are smoother than others, but when we start to talk about the "flavor" of a particular vodka, it's sort of besides the point.
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What I'm trying to relate, poorly evidently, was that while I used to think essentially what you've said, I now realize that perhaps there is more going on with vodka.

That's a good thing, because the race to flavorless vodka meant, to me anyways, that vodka was just terribly boring. I'm not sure where this idea comes from though, other than the marketing departments of various vodka distillers.

Almost by definition, bad vodka tastes bad. Among most modern distillers the solution has been that good vodka doesn't taste. So you get all kinds of esoteric n-tuple distilling and filtering processes with their corresponding marketing hype.

Boyd and Blair, to me anyways, tastes good. Good flavor is a much more desirable solution than no flavor for the problem of bad tasting vodka in my opinion.

Vodka is simply some kind of distilled grain alcohol. There's nothing in the rules that says you can't aim for something with good flavor. Sure it flies in the face of modern vodka orthodoxy, but from what my Polish and Russian friends tell me, this really doesn't have much to do with the history of the drink anyways.

I guess what I'm saying is this: In PA a bottle sells for $30. I would have no problem recommending that someone go to the House of Burgundy on West 58th where they evidently sell the stuff, plunk down $30 plus the upcharge you pay on most things for living in NYC, go home and throw the bottle in your freezer, and when it's cold try pour served up. I think that it tastes better than many other spirits that sell for about the price and I also think that it's a flavor that (as far as I know) you just aren't going to get out anything besides vodka. In the worst case scenario, you use it for mixed drinks and you're out the marginal $15 or whatever less that you'd pay for Sky or Tito's or any other "mixing" vodka. In the best case scenario, you get something that you really like and that is different from what you know.

I guess I'd preface this by limiting my advice to people whose experience with vodka is similar to mine: completely within the less flavor is better camp. I don't doubt that there are already (Eastern European) brands that do whatever it is that I like.

Everyone I know whose tried this stuff has been exited about it.
 
M

Monk

#10
#10
justme said:
There's nothing in the rules that says you can't aim for something with good flavor. Sure it flies in the face of modern vodka orthodoxy, but from what my Polish and Russian friends tell me, this really doesn't have much to do with the history of the drink anyways.
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See, this is what I was wondering. Although, I have to say, when I was in a former Russian state a few years ago, where they drank vodka like water, the brands they were selling (even in more upscale bars/lounges) didn't have any distinct flavor. They just all tasted like some variant of Stoli (which, BTW, isn't sold over there, only for export as I understand it). They're not served cold — room temperature was the fashion. And you could buy a wide variety of vodka brands in the supermarket (and, generally speaking, for a lot less than $30/liter).
 
J

justlooking

#12
#12
RuffToy said:
Try Imperia. Imperia uses winter wheat from the black soil of the Russian Steppes,distilled eight times and blended with the glacial waters from Lake Lagoda. The liquid is then filtered twice through charcoal and twice again through quartz crystals from the Ural Mountains. The Imperia formula is based on Dmitri Mendeleev's original formula, decreed by Czar Alexander III in 1894 as "The Standard of Vodka."
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No offense, but that sounds from start to finish like the kind of total marketing bullshit that put discerning drinkers off vodka for years.
 
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J

justlooking

#13
#13
I think justme makes the crucial point about vodka: it really isn't for cocktails. It's really for putting in the freezer and drinking straight, the way they do in Russia and Eastern Europe.

I didn't realize what was good about vodka until I went to a party where someone who had just returned from Eastern Europe laid out 10 bottles and we tried them each straight, comparing the flavors. First, I saw that there were flavors, and second, I saw the way vodka should be drunk. Cuz even the flavors in these vodkas wouldn't survive being mixed in a cocktail.

Of course, most Americans agree with this, since most of the "cocktails" they use vodka pretty much equate to drinking it straight.
 
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O

Ozzy

#18
#18
franca said:
I disagree. Some vodkas really do have flavor. It's subtle, but it's there. My personal favorite is Luksusowa, which happens to made from potatoes.
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Somewhere around here I mentioned that the Polish, Fin and Swed vodkas were the best.... This was one of them.
 
O

oldfool

#19
#19
stevana said:
Thanks for mentioning. Vodka in the freezer I do. Gin in the freezer? Never heard the idea. Maybe I have missed something. What do others think of the approach? Thanks.
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I watch some of my young friends take an expensive tequila, shake it up with ice (now it may as well be a cheaper tequila since it's been diluted) and throw down a shot followed by an "aahhh."
They laugh at me because I keep it in the freezer and sip it.
I'm going to try the vodkas...never got into drinking it alone, although I love tequila, bourbon, Irish, and brandy neat.
 
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