bringing drinks to life

What is it about vodka that makes it so popular? It sells by the bucket load in the UK, in fact it is the top selling spirit by a country mile. Consumers can’t seem to get enough of it and a new brand seems to launch every week. Personally I’ve never understood its popularity, dress it up any way you want (and brands find some of the most ridiculous ways to dress up a bottle of vodka these days) it still seems like pretty boring stuff to me. No colour, very little flavour, not much happening on the aroma front either. I hold it personally responsible for the bastardisation of the Martini and couldn’t tell you the last time I was even tempted to order a vodka based cocktail… It’s safe to say I’m not a huge fan of the stuff.

 

 

The bitters&twisted drinking room is fairly well stocked with most spirits, there are over 60 American whiskies, 50 or so rums, 25+ tequilas, hell I even have 25 gins to choose from, but when it comes to vodka there are currently only 5 gracing the shelves. While in the past I was quietly proud of this fact, it recently occurred to me that maybe I should at least attempt to get over this bias and see if it’s possible for me to gain an appreciation of this popular spirit.

 

 

A while back I did a blind tasting of 15 vodkas for Imbibe magazine and, while I could appreciate the subtle differences between them I still walked away thinking that unless I was drinking vodka neat it would just be lost in a cocktail. Gaining a love for this spirit wasn’t going to be easy; it was definitely going to take more than doing a comparative tasting to make me want to grow my vodka collection!

 

 

I came close to liking vodka just before Christmas when the kind folk at Belvedere invited me to New York for their brand ambassador competition. When they sent me a bottle of Belvedere Intense Unfiltered I could actually appreciate the flavour and maybe more importantly the texture of this beautifully made spirit. But that being said it still wasn’t enough to change my drinking habits! So in order to try and take this small, but new-found appreciation a step further I decided that what I needed was an opinionated bartender, who’s views on spirits and cocktails I respect and who loves vodka. Enter Mr Pete Jeary of Hawksmoor Seven Dials.

 

 

My challenge to Pete was a simple one; to talk me through his love of vodka, argue against my objections to it, and make me some drinks that would challenge my perception and if possible, get me amped-up about drinking vodka. I didn’t hold out much hope for his chances, but he said he was willing to rise to the challenge, so off to Hawksmoor I went for a vodka education from the man who got me hooked on bourbon!

 

When I think about how I perceive spirits, I have to admit that 95% of the time I look at them from a cocktail perspective; what flavours and aromas do they have? What ingredients will complement them? How versatile are they for mixing? The other 5% of the time I am looking at how they stand up on their own; can they be sipped and savoured neat? Do they need a splash of water to open them up? What cigar would go best with them?

 

 

You see I like my spirits to be packed full of character, I love discovering subtle layers of aromas and flavours and enjoy the process of pondering what style of drink it might lend itself to. These things for me are the magic of spirits and cocktails and are the reason this blog exists. I have to say that when I try to do this with vodka it is a very brief experience and usually results in me thinking about which rum I should choose instead.

 

 

If Pete was going to be successful in turning me to the dark side, a new approach would be needed in order to make me look at vodka in a different way. I would need to start my journey from another perspective entirely, I mean this isn’t an aged spirit, full of complexity and layers of flavour; it’s subtle and delicate, so maybe I’ve been coming at it from the wrong direction entirely?

 

In order to really make this an interesting experience I thought it best to lay my cards on the table and tell Pete my objections up front. That way he would know what he was dealing with and could argue against them, to try to persuade me to open my mind up to vodka. So below you’ll find my objections and Pete’s responses to them, as well as a few cocktail recipes from the drinks we sampled.

 

 

So here are my objections to vodka:

 

It’s dull and uninteresting – while I am happy to admit that it does have some flavour and that there are differences between one vodka and the next, when it comes to cocktails those differences are so subtle that they are lost and the only purpose it serves is to add alcohol to a drink.

 

Other spirits are better for cocktails – I can’t think of a drink that isn’t better when a different spirit is substituted for the vodka. A Martini is better with gin, a Bloody Mary is better with gin or tequila, a Cosmo is better with any other spirit (apart from maybe scotch)…

 

Flavoured vodka is a waste of back bar space – if you want your vodka cocktail to taste of orange you can add that flavour through the use of bitters, orange juice or orange twists.

 

Super premium vodkas are a huge waste of money – I can understand how a small batch spirit that has been lovingly aged for many years and blended to create a subtle balance of flavours can attract a high price, but paying £100 for a relatively neutral spirit in a fancy bottle is ludicrous.

 

Sitting down with Pete over several glasses of vodka and a couple of vodka cocktails, we started our debate. Also on hand was Rich Hunt who was working the bar that day and couldn’t resist getting involved in the argument. I stated my case and very quickly it seemed that Pete agreed with many of my points, but this didn’t dent his love of vodka.

 

 

Rich was quick to point out that there are drinks that are better with vodka, but when challenged, the drinks he produced were a celebration of the other ingredients with vodka merely making up the extra liquid and adding alcohol into the mix. But hold on, maybe this is one of the keys to appreciating vodka? You see it doesn’t add much flavour to a cocktail, but that can be a good thing.

 

 

Both Pete and Rich went to work demonstrating that a drink can actually be better with a spirit that lets the other ingredients shine and perhaps the best example of this is in the humble Bloody Mary. We made a Virgin Mary and a Bloody Mary and compared them and the addition of vodka made a lighter, crisper drink where the spices and flavours came through more clearly. Alcohol is an agent for carrying flavour and in a mostly neutral spirit such as vodka there is nothing to interfere with that process. Rich was quick to turn my argument that other spirits are better in cocktails on its head by pointing out that this is only true if you enjoy the flavour of that particular spirit!

 

 

When it came to flavoured vodkas, both Pete and Rich agreed that it’s ridiculous to see a bar stocking dozens of flavours when most of them can be improved upon by using fresh ingredients or liqueurs to introduce those flavours, but there are products out there that stand out as being exceptional. Take for example Belvedere’s Bloody Mary vodka, which is a fantastic product that stands on its own as being tasty, well balanced and complex. Then you have products such as Babicka and Zubrowka, both of which are fantastic vodkas that have other flavour elements added to them (wormwood and bison grass respectively). These infused vodkas offer flavours that aren’t readily available in other products and open up a new set of flavour combinations for bartenders to play with.

 

 

Many of these more uniquely flavoured vodkas are also fantastic to enjoy neat and this turned the debate in a whole new direction. You see Pete’s love of vodka comes down largely to the fact that he enjoys it the way it has been consumed for centuries, in a glass with nothing to distract from it. Those subtle flavours and unique textures that you find in vodka can be appreciated to their fullest this way and the fact that they are not challenging or heavy makes them an easy option for sipping neat. As Pete put it “Perhaps we need to realise that the countries that have been making vodkas for hundreds of years also know how to drink it. Just neat so that you can appreciate the flavours that are in the vodka!”

 

 

In the end it seems that there are plenty of reasons to enjoy vodka and although it took us the best part of 2 hours to reach a conclusion in favour of vodka it was worth the effort. Vodka is not a challenging and complex spirit, it is simple, subtle and understated compared with other categories, but this is its beauty too. It can act as a vessel for other flavours, amplifying and enhancing them. It can be appreciated neat for its subtleties. It is the one spirit that you can offer anyone and not be told ‘I hate the flavour of Cachaca/gin/tequila etc.’ in fact the very thing that I started off disliking about it, the fact that it is ‘dull’, is also it’s saving grace.

 

 

Pete phrased it perfectly when he pointed out that perhaps my ‘argument against vodka… that it’s dull, has no flavour etc. is also the argument for vodka. Alcohol intensifies flavours and allows them to shine through, it brings them to life, and if the spirit has few other characteristics then it doesn’t get in the way.’ In the case of vodka that’s a more than good enough reason to have a bottle to hand at all times. The phrase ‘less is more’ springs to mind!

 

 

As for which vodkas we would recommend… well that’s a different topic for another day, but keep an eye on the bitters&twisted website as we’ll be addressing that one soon!