Treptow is the kind of Berlin district where old industrial buildings stand shoulder to shoulder with workshops and galleries. In 2013 the first distillery in a family that has since spread across several continents opened here. Everything began in Berlin.

Expert description

Our Vodka By Berlin is a German Vodka from Our/Berlin in Treptow, bottled at 37.5%.

Our/Berlin was the prototype. When the idea of a global brand with local distilleries had to be tried out in the real world, Berlin was picked as the first city, and the whole model — micro distillery in the city centre, local partners, local ingredients and the same recipe everywhere — was tested here before London, Detroit and the rest followed.

The vodka is made from German wheat and water drawn from the ground in Treptow. The spirit is blended and hand bottled on site, and the labels go onto the bottles in the same room the production stands in. It is as much craft as manufacturing.

The site is run by Jon and Pauline, who came to the project from PR and fashion, and that has shaped where the brand ended up. Our/Berlin has become a regular in the city's fashion, music and lifestyle circles and ranks among the best selling vodkas in Berlin's airports.

Tasting notes

Nose

Soft wheat with a touch of white bread and a suggestion of anise. The aroma is low and straightforward.

Palate

Round and mild with clear grain sweetness. There is little bite, but a lightly saline note turns up towards the end.

Finish

Short and soft. The sweetness dries out slowly and only a faint warmth remains.

Specifications

Name: Our Vodka By Berlin
Distillery: Our/Berlin
Region/Country: Treptow, Berlin, Germany
Type: German Vodka
ABV: 37.5%
Size: 35 CL
Serving suggestion: Ice cold as a shot beside a beer, or in a Moscow Mule where the grain sweetness meets the ginger.

Flavour profile

Soft · Grain sweet · Mild · Lightly saline

Did you know?

Our/Vodka began as a secret project. The idea was developed in Stockholm by Åsa Caap together with colleagues from the agency Great Works, and they worked on it after hours and from their own homes for two years before Pernod Ricard approved a pilot in Berlin.

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Under the railway arches at Hackney Downs the trains pass overhead every few minutes. Beneath them stands a distillery about the size of a workshop, filling vodka into bottles that look like something a milkman left on the step.

Expert description

Our Vodka By London is an English Vodka from Our/London in Hackney, bottled at 37.5%.

Our/Vodka rests on a simple idea: one global brand, but a distillery in every city, run by people who live there. The recipe is the same everywhere, while the ingredients are sourced as close by as possible and each city gets its own name on the bottle. The distilleries are small enough to sit inside the city rather than out in a field.

The London site opened in November 2015 and is run by Clive Watson, who is behind several London restaurants including Blixen, and Neil Chivers, operations director at the PR agency LD Communications with bands such as the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd on the client list. The space is production, tasting room and event venue in one.

The bottle is the same in every city: a low, broad shape with a screw cap that borrows its look from an old fashioned milk bottle. The label is pure typography and the city name. There is no decoration to hide behind, which suits a distillery under a railway bridge rather well.

Tasting notes

Nose

Clean and lightly grainy with a dry citrus tone. Something bakery like sits behind it, rather like a bowl of wheat flour.

Palate

Lighter in body than the 40 percent vodkas. Mild sweetness in the middle, after which a dry, almost chalky sensation takes over.

Finish

Short and clean with a small prick of pepper. It disappears quickly and leaves the mouth dry.

Specifications

Name: Our Vodka By London
Distillery: Our/London
Region/Country: Hackney, London, England
Type: English Vodka
ABV: 37.5%
Size: 35 CL
Serving suggestion: In a Vodka Tonic with cucumber and lemon peel, where the lower strength keeps the drink easy going.

Flavour profile

Dry · Light · Grainy · Citrus

Did you know?

The grain spirit for Our/London does not come from London but from a site just outside Birmingham. It was the closest place the team could find that could deliver the same purity every time — and they chose to be open about it rather than call everything local.

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Raspberries are hard to pin down. Fresh off the cane they are tart with a green edge; cooked down into jam they turn dark, round and almost syrupy. This bottle sits closer to the pan than to the cane, and that is a deliberate choice.

Expert description

Stolichnaya Raspberry Flavored, known as Stoli Razberi, is a Latvian Vodka made from wheat and rye with raspberry flavour, bottled at 37.5%.

The flavour range drove the house for years. When bartenders in the 1990s started building drinks around colour and fruit rather than dry classics, Stolichnaya already had a shelf of expressions ready, and the raspberry became the most asked for of the lot.

The base is the same as everything else in the range. Wheat and rye go through columns, get blended with Latvian artesian water and filtered through quartz sand, birch charcoal and woven cloth. Production sits at Latvijas Balzams in Riga, not in Russia, however much the name pulls that way.

The raspberry is added after distillation. That means the fruit lives in the aroma and the front of the palate while the rye still registers behind it as a dry streak. It is exactly that combination that stops the bottle collapsing into sweetness once you mix it with cranberry or lemon.

Tasting notes

Nose

Raspberry jam and boiled sweets, with a twist of lemon peel at the edge. The aroma is sweeter than the palate promises.

Palate

Full berry with a creamy texture. Halfway through, the grain arrives as a dry, spiced streak, and there is more acidity than the nose suggests.

Finish

Short to medium. The sweetness lets go quickly and leaves a faint stalky bitterness from the fruit.

Specifications

Name: Stolichnaya Raspberry Flavored
Producer: Stoli Group
Region/Country: Riga, Latvia
Type: Latvian Vodka
ABV: 37.5%
Size: 70 CL
Distillation method: Column distilled and filtered through quartz sand, birch charcoal and woven cloth
EAN no.: 4750021000256
Serving suggestion: In a Cosmopolitan instead of clear vodka, or ice cold with sparkling water and a few fresh raspberries.

Flavour profile

Raspberry sweet · Tart · Creamy · Short

Did you know?

Stoli Razberi passed a million cases sold in a year in 2004, the first expression in the house flavour range to get there. The range now runs to more than a dozen variants, from jalapeño to salted caramel.

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Vanilla is one of the most expensive spices in the world and one of the most misread. A real pod is not simply sweet. It is dark, resinous and faintly smoky, and that is exactly the side a vanilla vodka either catches or misses altogether.

Expert description

Stolichnaya Vanilla Flavored is a Latvian Vodka made from wheat and rye with vanilla flavour, bottled at 37.5%.

Plenty of people still assume the bottle comes from Russia. It does not. Stolichnaya for the European market is blended and bottled at Latvijas Balzams in Riga, a plant that has made spirits since 1900, and the water is Latvian artesian water drawn from wells beneath the site.

The base spirit follows the house recipe: wheat and rye run through columns, then filtration through quartz sand, birch charcoal and finally woven cloth. The rye is the whole reason there is something for the vanilla to hang on. It lays down a dry, faintly peppery floor that the sweetness can lean against instead of spreading out.

The flavour itself comes from natural vanilla aroma added after distillation, as is the norm for flavoured vodka. Bottling strength sits at 37.5% against 38% for the clear expression, and that half a percent shows: this one is a shade rounder in the mouth and less sharp at the close.

Tasting notes

Nose

Vanilla pod and a touch of white chocolate. Behind it sits a dry grain note that keeps the aroma from tipping into cake batter.

Palate

Soft and round. Vanilla and candied sugar fill the front of the mouth before the rye cuts in with a dry edge.

Finish

Medium. The sweetness lets go slowly and leaves something close to vanilla sugar on the tongue.

Specifications

Name: Stolichnaya Vanilla Flavored
Producer: Stoli Group
Region/Country: Riga, Latvia
Type: Latvian Vodka
ABV: 37.5%
Size: 70 CL
Distillation method: Column distilled and filtered through quartz sand, birch charcoal and woven cloth
EAN no.: 4750021000393
Serving suggestion: Ice cold over ice with a strip of orange peel, or in an Espresso Martini where the vanilla replaces the syrup.

Flavour profile

Vanilla sweet · Creamy · Round · Lightly peppery

Did you know?

The name Stolichnaya is the adjectival form of the Russian stolitsa, capital. The bottle is literally called the one from the capital — a name from the 1930s that today sits on a vodka filled in Riga.

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West of Warsaw the Mazovian plain runs flat, and on it grows a rye Polish farmers have worked with for generations. Dankowskie is its name. It was not chosen because it yields the most, but because it yields the most flavour — and that is the whole starting point for Belvedere.

Expert description

Belvedere Ultra Premium is a Polish Vodka distilled four times from Dankowskie rye and bottled at 40%.

It is made at Polmos Żyrardów, a distillery that has been running since 1910 in the factory town of Żyrardów. The rye comes from Polish fields and the water is drawn from the distillery's own artesian wells. Neither sugar, glycerol nor flavouring is added, before or after distillation.

The four distillations are not four identical runs. The first pass happens at an agricultural distillery close to the fields, after which the spirit goes three times through column stills at Żyrardów. The craft lies in stopping before the rye has gone. Plenty of vodkas are distilled until nothing remains but alcohol and water; here the grain is allowed to stay.

That is why Belvedere tastes of something. There is a clear rye character, a creamy middle and a peppered edge that make it more interesting neat than most, and more stubborn in a drink where it refuses to simply disappear.

Tasting notes

Nose

Fresh rye bread crust and vanilla, with a lightly milky tone underneath. The alcohol is barely noticeable.

Palate

Creamy and full through the middle, where the rye brings a mild sweetness. Black pepper and a nutty pull follow.

Finish

Medium and dry. The pepper holds on for a while as the sweetness falls away.

Specifications

Name: Belvedere Ultra Premium
Distillery: Polmos Żyrardów
Region/Country: Żyrardów, Poland
Type: Polish Vodka
ABV: 40%
Size: 70 CL
Distillation method: Four times distilled
EAN no.: 5901041003003
Serving suggestion: In a Martini stirred rather than shaken, so the creamy texture holds. Or cool and neat alongside roe.

Flavour profile

Creamy · Rye spiced · Vanilla soft · Peppered

Did you know?

The building on the bottle is the Belweder Palace in Warsaw, from which the brand takes its name. The palace has housed Polish heads of state, and the image with its bare trees in front is printed so that it glows through when the bottle is held up to a lamp.

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In September 2008 the first pallet stood ready in southern California. 5,400 cases. They vanished so fast that retailers began rationing customers to one bottle each, and the rest of the United States had to wait until the following year. Nobody had seen a bottle shaped like a head before.

Expert description

Crystal Head Vodka is a Canadian Vodka distilled four times from corn and bottled at 40%.

Behind the bottle stand actor Dan Aykroyd and artist John Alexander. The idea came from the story of the thirteen crystal skulls said to have been held by native peoples of the Americas — the Navajo, the Aztec, the Maya — and to project positive energy. The two insisted that the bottle was not a skull but a head: a symbol of life rather than of death.

Production takes place in St. John's, Newfoundland, at one of the last government owned distilleries in the world. The raw material is peaches and cream corn, distilled four times into neutral spirit before the spirit is cut with local water down to 40%. The vodka is then filtered seven times, three of those passes running over Herkimer diamonds. Nothing is added — no glycerol, no citrus oils, no sugar.

Tasting notes

Nose

Calm and grainy with a fine citrus edge. There is no spirit sting even when you go in close.

Palate

Corn sweetness settles in the middle of the tongue, soft and almost milky, with vanilla laid over the top.

Finish

Creamy and sweet, but short. It leaves neatly, without bite and without bitterness.

Specifications

Name: Crystal Head Vodka
Distillery: Crystal Head Vodka
Region/Country: Newfoundland, Canada
Type: Canadian Vodka
ABV: 40%
Size: 70 CL
Distillation method: Four times distilled
EAN no.: 0712475339485
Serving suggestion: Cold in a small glass, or in a White Russian where the corn sweetness meets the coffee liqueur.

Flavour profile

Soft · Creamy · Vanilla sweet · Neutral

Did you know?

The legend of the thirteen crystal skulls is the entire reason for the bottle's shape. The story says the skulls must be brought together again to grant humanity insight. Aykroyd and Alexander borrowed the image but reversed its meaning: their version is a head, not a skull, and is meant to read as a symbol of life.

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A litre and a half changes the shape of an evening. Nobody counts glasses, and nobody has to go digging in a cupboard for a fresh bottle halfway through. The geese also get room to spread across a surface where you can actually see them.

Expert description

Grey Goose is a French Vodka made from soft winter wheat, bottled at 40% in a 150 cl bottle.

The water is the half of the recipe that rarely gets told properly. It comes from a well in Gensac-la-Pallue, a small town in the Cognac region, where it rises from an aquifer beneath the building itself. On the way up through the limestone it is filtered naturally, and it is collected fresh at the source without further treatment.

That water is precisely why blending and bottling happen in Cognac rather than in Picardie, where the wheat grows. The spirit is brought to Gensac and taken down to strength with the spring water, and only then does it go into glass. The whole chain stays inside French borders.

At this size it becomes a different sort of bottle to handle. Full, it wants two hands, and in return it stretches across a whole evening of drinks built for the table rather than for single glasses. The soft wheat character takes citrus, bubbles and elderflower without disappearing.

Tasting notes

Nose

Soft grain and pale marzipan, with a floral note and a breath of freshly peeled lemon over the top.

Palate

Round and full. The wheat settles as mild sweetness mid tongue, followed by a discreet nutty note and a stroke of pepper.

Finish

Soft and medium. It dries out slowly and leaves a cool, mineral impression behind.

Specifications

Name: Grey Goose
Producer: Grey Goose
Region/Country: Picardie and Cognac, France
Type: French Vodka
ABV: 40%
Size: 150 CL
Distillation method: Single distilled in a continuous column
Serving suggestion: In a Le Grand Fizz with elderflower liqueur, lime and sparkling water, served in large wine glasses for the whole table.

Flavour profile

Round · Soft · Nutty · Cool

Did you know?

The man who put the recipe together was François Thibault, a maître de chai from Cognac. He had worked with brandy all his life and had never made vodka, and he approached the job like a cellar master: choose the raw material, touch it as little as possible and let the water decide the rest.

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Three litres is no longer a bottle you pass across a table. It stays where it is set down, and the rest of the evening moves around it. At that size the geese on the side are drawn at close to full scale.

Please note: The image is a model photo.

Expert description

Grey Goose is a French Vodka made from soft winter wheat from Picardie, bottled at 40% in a 300 cl bottle.

The chain behind the bottle is shorter than you might assume. The wheat is harvested in Picardie and milled and distilled there before the spirit travels south to Cognac. There it is blended with spring water and bottled. From crop to cork none of it leaves France, and that is the founding story of the house: control over every link rather than bought-in neutral spirit.

The winter wheat is chosen for starch and softness. It is sown in autumn, sits in the northern French soil all winter and is only cut the following summer, which gives a grain with more to work with. The single pass through a continuous column is set high enough to clean the spirit without shaving the wheat off it.

At three litres the bottle is as much furniture as it is spirit. The glass is thick and frosted, and because it scatters light rather than mirroring it, you can set a light source behind it and make the landscape draw itself through. Behind a bar it is hard to miss, which is rather the point.

Tasting notes

Nose

Baked wheat bread and almond, with a fine floral edge and a hint of green lemon.

Palate

Rich and smooth in the mouth. The grain gives mild sweetness, the nuttiness sits underneath, and the pepper only arrives right at the end.

Finish

Long and soft. The sweetness ebbs away slowly and leaves a dry, mineral coolness standing.

Specifications

Name: Grey Goose
Producer: Grey Goose
Region/Country: Picardie and Cognac, France
Type: French Vodka
ABV: 40%
Size: 300 CL
Distillation method: Single distilled in a continuous column
Serving suggestion: Pour over crushed ice with tonic and a cucumber spear when serving many people at once.

Flavour profile

Soft · Full · Nutty · Long

Did you know?

Bacardi bought Grey Goose in 2004, only seven years after the brand launched. The deal was at the time the largest ever done for a single spirits brand, and François Thibault stayed on in charge of production.

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Picardie in winter is flat, wet and wind-scoured. The wheat is sown in autumn and stands in the ground through the whole cold season before it is cut the following summer. That long, slow ripening is what an entire idea about vodka rests on.

Expert description

Grey Goose is a French Vodka distilled from soft winter wheat from Picardie and bottled at 40%.

There are two ingredients in the bottle and no more: the wheat and the water. The wheat is grown in Picardie in northern France, where soil and climate produce a soft variety high in starch, and the water comes from the house well in the Cognac region. None of it leaves France along the way.

The unusual part is the distillation. Where most so-called premium vodkas market themselves on five, seven or ten passes, Grey Goose runs only once through a continuous column. The thinking is the opposite of the norm: each extra distillation cleans the spirit while taking away some of the grain, and here the grain is the point of the bottle.

You can taste it. A soft, almost marzipan sweetness sits through the middle, the kind that sharply distilled vodkas have polished out. The bottle itself carries flying geese over a French landscape, and the glass is frosted so the image reads more clearly.

Tasting notes

Nose

Fresh wheat and a touch of marzipan. Behind it sits something floral and a suggestion of lemon peel.

Palate

Silky, with obvious grain sweetness through the middle. A light almond note spreads out before white pepper gives it an edge.

Finish

Clean and medium. The sweetness falls away calmly and leaves a dry, faintly peppery impression.

Specifications

Name: Grey Goose
Producer: Grey Goose
Region/Country: Picardie and Cognac, France
Type: French Vodka
ABV: 40%
Size: 70 CL
Distillation method: Single distilled in a continuous column
EAN no.: 5010677850100
Serving suggestion: In a dry Martini with a lemon twist, or neat in a cool glass without ice.

Flavour profile

Soft · Grain sweet · Almond · Clean

Did you know?

The man behind Grey Goose, Sidney Frank, was an importer who had already turned a German herbal liqueur into an American cult phenomenon before he decided in 1997 to build a French luxury vodka. He had no background in spirits production — he had an idea and a salesman's ear for what people wanted to believe.

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A distillery in Skåne, a copper column built in 1921, and a team of people who still run it by hand. Temperature and flow rate are not set by a computer here. They are adjusted lever by lever, exactly as the generation before did it.

Expert description

Absolut Elyx is a Swedish Vodka distilled from single estate winter wheat in a 1921 copper still and bottled at 42.3%.

The column is called Column 51 and is built entirely from copper. It is operated manually by a small handful of people, led by Krister Asplund, and every handle, valve and level is set by hand. The copper is not merely construction material. It acts as a catalyst, capturing the heavier compounds in the spirit as it travels, and that accounts for much of the oily mouthfeel.

The wheat comes from a single estate, Råbelöf in southern Sweden, where wheat has been grown since the 1400s. Dry cold winters and long warm summers suit winter wheat, and the grain carries the starch balance the distillery is looking for. The water is drawn from a local aquifer.

Tasting notes

Nose

Clean and rich. Freshly baked bread and white chocolate sit on top, with a soft layer of cereal and mellow spice underneath.

Palate

Macadamia nuts and creamed cereal spread out, followed by white chocolate and buttery bread notes. The texture is thick without being cloying.

Finish

Rounded and mildly spiced with a fresh nuttiness. It lingers a long time and closes quietly.

Specifications

Name: Absolut Elyx
Distillery: Absolut Elyx
Region/Country: Åhus, Sweden
Type: Swedish Vodka
ABV: 42.3%
Size: 70 CL
Distillation method: Manually operated 1921 copper column
Serving suggestion: Over a single large ice cube, or in a Martini with a whisper of dry vermouth.

Flavour profile

Silky · Nutty · Bready · Mildly spiced

Did you know?

The copper inside Column 51 is consumed. Thousands of small copper packets sit within the column and are sacrificed as they pull unwanted compounds out of the spirit. They have to be replaced at intervals, because the metal itself is slowly eaten away by the process.

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The fields around Råbelöf have been there since the 1400s. Winter wheat is sown in autumn, sits out the cold in Skåne soil and is harvested the following year — and the whole journey from that grain to this bottle covers less than a dozen kilometres as the crow flies.

Please note: The image is a model photo.

Expert description

Absolut Elyx Single Estate is a Swedish Vodka made from winter wheat grown on one estate, distilled in copper and bottled at 42.3% in a 175 cl bottle.

The large format is aimed at the bar and at the evenings where more than one round gets poured. The contents match the standard bottle: wheat from Råbelöf in Skåne, manual distillation in the 1921 copper column the house calls Column 51, and a bottling strength a couple of points above what a vodka usually carries.

The copper does the work. The metal reacts with the spirit along the way and strips out the compounds that would otherwise leave sharpness, and what remains has a texture closer to cream than to water. That is exactly why it performs in drinks with nowhere to hide — a Martini, a Vesper, Elyx over ice.

Tasting notes

Nose

Soft cereal and fresh bread, with white chocolate and a layer of mellow spice behind.

Palate

Rich and juicy. Macadamia first, then creamed cereal and a buttery sweetness that never tips into sugar.

Finish

Long and rounded. The nutty note holds while the spice falls away slowly.

Specifications

Name: Absolut Elyx Single Estate
Distillery: Absolut Elyx
Region/Country: Åhus, Sweden
Type: Swedish Vodka
ABV: 42.3%
Size: 175 CL
Distillation method: Manually operated 1921 copper column
Serving suggestion: Pour it over one large ice cube, or build a Vesper where the texture carries the drink.

Flavour profile

Rich · Creamy · Nutty · Dry finish

Did you know?

Everything happens within fifteen miles. From the moment the wheat is sown at Råbelöf until the finished vodka stands in the bottle, Absolut Elyx keeps the entire chain inside a radius of roughly twenty-four kilometres around the distillery. Grain, water, distillation and bottling all sit in the same corner of Skåne.

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Some evenings run out of vodka long before they run out of conversation. This format is built for exactly those. Big, heavy and made to stay in the middle of the table while everyone takes a turn pouring.

Expert description

Ciroc Premium French Vodka in the large format is a French Vodka distilled five times from French wine grapes and bottled at 40%.

The format changes nothing about the liquid, but it changes how the bottle gets used. 175 cl covers roughly 43 drinks at 4 cl, and that is precisely where a grape based vodka earns its keep. It carries enough fruit acidity to keep a long drink alive through a whole evening without anyone reaching for more lemon juice every round.

The spirit comes from Mauzac Blanc and Ugni Blanc, fermented into wine first and then run through four column distillations. The fifth pass happens in a traditional copper pot still at Maison Villevert in southern France, built along the same lines as the stills used for armagnac. That step is what delivers the soft, faintly oily texture that makes the vodka work neat and in volume alike.

Tasting notes

Nose

Fresh and fairly discreet. Grapefruit peel on top, a dry, almost wine like note beneath it and a trace of almond blossom.

Palate

Round and generous through the middle, where the white grape steps clearly forward. There is a light sweetness with nothing syrupy about it and a cooler mineral line running through.

Finish

Clean and short, with a dry bite right at the end. It leaves nothing heavy sitting on the palate, which matters over a long session.

Specifications

Name: Ciroc Premium French Vodka
Distillery: Ciroc
Region/Country: Cognac, France
Type: French Vodka
ABV: 40%
Size: 175 CL
Distillation method: Five times distilled
Serving suggestion: Fridge cold in a Vodka Soda with lime, or as the base of a batched cocktail for the whole room.

Flavour profile

Fresh · Round · Dry grape character · Mineral

Did you know?

Ciroc struggled out of the gate and moved fewer than 40,000 cases a year in its first seasons on the market. By 2014 the brand was passing two million cases annually. Very few vodkas have made a jump that steep in that short a time.

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Behind every bar stands a bottle nobody touches on a Tuesday. It does not come out because someone ordered a drink. It comes out because it fills the room the second it lands on the shelf.

Expert description

Ciroc Premium French Vodka in the six litre format is a French Vodka distilled five times from French wine grapes and bottled at 40%.

Six litres equals more than eight standard 70 cl bottles. This is not a format for a home bar. It belongs on the back wall of a cocktail bar, at a corporate reception, or on the table where everyone is meant to see what is being served. The glass is correspondingly heavy, and the bottle needs both hands or a fixed cradle.

The liquid is identical to the standard bottling. Mauzac Blanc from Gaillac and Ugni Blanc from Cognac are fermented into wine, run through four column distillations and finished in a copper pot still at Maison Villevert in southern France. Nothing is aged, nothing is added, and the spirit is cut to 40% before bottling. The advantage of the format is not the flavour but the staging.

Tasting notes

Nose

Quiet and cool on first approach. Lime peel and white blossom arrive first, followed by something lightly mineral, close to wet flint.

Palate

Smooth and full with clear grape character. The sweetness is restrained and dries out along the way, while a point of pepper holds the middle in place.

Finish

Dry and mineral, short in duration. Nothing tacky is left behind, which counts when it is being poured in long rounds.

Specifications

Name: Ciroc Premium French Vodka
Distillery: Ciroc
Region/Country: Cognac, France
Type: French Vodka
ABV: 40%
Size: 600 CL
Distillation method: Five times distilled
Serving suggestion: Decant into a chilled carafe and serve in a tall glass with ice, lime and soda water.

Flavour profile

Smooth · Mineral · Dry grape · Clean finish

Did you know?

Ciroc has moved outside the vodka category as well. June 2018 brought Ciroc VS Brandy, a blend of aged French brandies, part of it distilled in copper pot stills and matured in French oak. Same fruit, this time with cask time behind it.

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High above the Tarn valley in Gaillac the grapes come off the vine while the nights are still cold. They never reach a wine bottle. They are pressed, fermented and pushed through five distillations until nothing but clear spirit remains. And still, the vineyard is somehow left in the glass.

Expert description

Ciroc Premium French Vodka is a French Vodka distilled five times from French wine grapes and bottled at 40%.

Two white grape varieties do the work. Mauzac Blanc grows in the high vineyards around Gaillac in south west France, Ugni Blanc comes from Cognac. The fruit is cold macerated at around 8 degrees so the aromatics are drawn slowly out of the skins, then the must is cold fermented into wine. Distillation only begins once that wine is finished. The method belongs to the wine trade rather than to the brewhouse.

The first four runs happen in column stills, taking the spirit up to roughly 96%. The fifth and final run takes place in a tailor made copper pot still at Maison Villevert in southern France, and that is where the character is set. Nothing is aged and nothing is added before the spirit is cut with water to 40%. Since no grain enters the recipe, the vodka is gluten free.

Tasting notes

Nose

Citrus peel and a light floral lift. Underneath sits something sweet and juicy that points clearly towards grape rather than grain.

Palate

Soft, almost oily across the tongue. Citrus arrives first, then a mild white grape sweetness, and finally a trace of white pepper.

Finish

Short and clean cut. The citrus note withdraws slowly and leaves no burn behind in the throat.

Specifications

Name: Ciroc Premium French Vodka
Distillery: Ciroc
Region/Country: Cognac, France
Type: French Vodka
ABV: 40%
Size: 70 CL
Distillation method: Five times distilled
EAN no.: 5010103916738
Serving suggestion: Cold in a small glass, or in a Vodka Martini where the citrus has room to speak.

Flavour profile

Citrus fresh · Soft · Lightly grape sweet · Clean

Did you know?

The name joins the French words cime, meaning summit, and roche, meaning rock. It points at the high vineyards around Cordes-sur-Ciel in Gaillac, a medieval town founded in 1222 that sits so far up its cliff that locals call it the village in the clouds.

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