The neck is frosted, as though the bottle had just come out of the freezer. That is no accident. The whole elit design points back at the one step that separates it from the rest of the Stolichnaya family: the cold.
Expert description
Elit Vodka is a Latvian Vodka from Stoli Group, distilled from wheat and bottled at 40%.
The foundation is an alpha grade spirit. That is not a marketing word but an official classification with limits on aldehydes, fusel oils and methanol that sit far above what ordinary neutral alcohol has to meet. The wheat is distilled three times before the spirit is even allowed to claim the label.
It is then cut with artesian water from a borehole roughly 200 metres beneath Latvijas Balzams in Riga, and after that comes the step everything else is built around. The vodka is chilled to minus 18 degrees and drawn at a crawl through ion charged filters. The cold makes the heavier compounds sluggish enough to be caught, and the spirit then rests before bottling.
What you get out of it shows most clearly when the glass is cold. There is no sharp edge, no burn in the nose and a mouthfeel that verges on oily. In return, this is not a vodka with a great deal to say aromatically — the point is purity and texture rather than a long list of notes.
Tasting notes
Nose
Very restrained. A pale grain character, a little white bread and a hint of fresh almond if you give it time.
Palate
Soft and full with an oily sensation across the tongue. Sweetness is low, and a light mineral tone runs underneath it all.
Finish
Short, clean and cool. Nothing lingers, and that is exactly the intention.
Specifications
Name: Elit Vodka
Producer: Stoli Group
Region/Country: Riga, Latvia
Type: Latvian Vodka
ABV: 40%
Size: 70 CL
Distillation method: Triple distilled and freeze filtered at minus 18 degrees
Serving suggestion: Straight from the freezer into a cool glass, or as the base of a Vodka Martini without too much vermouth.
Flavour profile
Clean · Oily · Neutral · Cool
Did you know?
The name is deliberately written with a lower case letter. The house calls it elit rather than Elit, and the small e runs across the label, the box and every piece of material — a detail that regularly makes people assume a typing error has crept in.
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