Vodka Isn’t Just for Shots and Soda

Every liquor has someone who’s a little too into it. Maybe you’ve met the flannel-clad, mustachio’ed bourbon guy who interrogates an unsuspecting bartender about which cooperage the barrels come from. Or maybe you’ve been across the bar from the too-cool-for-school natural wine lover swirling their glass and waxing poetic about how the winemaker’s bare feet added to the terroir of their skin-contact Semillón. But what comes to mind when you think of vodka? Vodka is always the bridesmaid, never the bride in the world of spirits. It’s supposed to be mostly odorless and flavorless. But vodka doesn’t just come out of nowhere—like all spirits, there are intentional choices in production that separate Stoli from Tito’s or Absolut from Grey Goose. Once you develop your palate and know what to look for, vodka is surprisingly complex.

So, What Is Vodka?

The clearest definition is “a colorless liquor of neutral spirits distilled from a mash (as of rye or wheat).” Vodka is straightforward. Perhaps there’s no “vodka guy” to stand up to the bourbon aficionado because vodka resists pretension. And while the bourbon guy might wake up with a headache after his delightfully oaky whiskey, vodka has fewer congeners (the compounds that induce hangovers), so clear liquor drinkers have the last laugh.

The History of Vodka

There’s the joke that while Mediterranean Europeans have mastered the art of enjoying drinking without getting drunk, Eastern Europeans do the opposite: getting drunk without enjoyment. But there’s more to it. Wine writer Alice Feiring lamented in To Fall in Love, Drink This that as a Polish Jew, her heritage had zero connection to wine: the liquor she had the most ancestral connection to was vodka. While digging into its history, however, Feiring found that that vodka was a comfort during frigid nights in the shtetl, a drink for keeping warm and toasting to survival. Wine was for Shabbos dinner; vodka was for everyday living. Because, after all, life isn’t always la dolce vita and decadence. Sometimes, or possibly oftentimes, drinking doesn’t happen to celebrate but rather to forget pain. The word wódka first appeared in Polish in 1408, but the process of distilling is probably much older. Spirits were mostly used for medicinal purposes at the time. One physician even said that vodka could “increase fertility and awaken lust.” Ah, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

How Did Vodka Come to America?

Vodka gained popularity in the US after soldiers brought it back during World War I. The Savoy Cocktail Book, a 1930s barman’s manual, included several vodka recipes that were popular well into the ‘50s and ‘60s. Even as America was locked in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, Americans still enjoyed vodka. Everclear, the “notorious” 95-proof vodka, got its trademark in 1950. American vodka goes far beyond Everclear, though, as the American craft distillation movement owes a lot to Texas’s own Tito’s Handmade Vodka. Founder Tito Beveridge started distilling with yellow corn as a hobby, and ended up growing a multi-million dollar brand which is now part of American cocktail culture.

What Makes Good Vodka?

Not all vodka is the same. There are three main elements that give a vodka its character: the raw material or base from which it’s made, the type of distillation used to make it, and the number of times it is distilled. Stephanie Ridgway of Pennsylvania-based Union Forge Vodka broke it down for TABLE.

The Base

You can technically make a vodka out of anything. People have done it with carrots. However, the most common bases are potato, corn, and rye. “People will always find a way to make booze out of something, and these grains often got discovered almost by accident,” Ridgway explained. Chopin is a potato-based vodka that has a slight creaminess and off-dry flavor with notes of toasted nuts. A corn-based vodka like Tito’s, on the other hand, is creamier with fewer notes of toasted nut. It makes a great vodka soda. Union Forge has a rye base with a bit of corn, which gives it a slight spiciness, making it ideal for martinis or Bloody Marys.

The Type of Still You Use

For distillation, you can use a pot still or a column still. Ridgway noted that the way that this changes the vodka has to do with vapors during the distillation process. In a pot still, vapors come up through a shorter, fatter neck, and you get a fuller body in the spirit. In a column still, you get a more delicate flavor. Some distillers use some combination of the two, proportioned according to how they want the spirit to turn out. Grey Goose column distills their vodka in Vidaly, France and then sends it to Cognac, France for proofing with spring water to retain flavor, whereas Union Forge copper column distills their vodka for an ultra-smooth mouthfeel and delicate body. Because you don’t need to age vodka, often whiskey distillers will make vodka while their whiskey is aging to help make sales.

The Number of Times You Distill

Though you don’t have to age vodka, there are choices to make about distillation. Distillation “strips” the vodka of everything but ethanol, and the more times you do it, the less flavor you have. Distillers arrive at the best number of distillations to achieve their brand’s characteristic flavor. Tito’s distills their vodka six times, Stoli distills four times, and Grey Goose only once. So, next time you’re at the bar, pause before ordering a vodka soda and ask for a specific brand, neat. Try to taste the differences. Just remember to drink responsibly…if there’s one thing about vodka, it’s that its enjoyment is not for the faint of heart.

Check out the rest of our liquor education series:

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Or, try some of these vodka cocktail recipes:

Story by Emma Riva Photo by Orkhan Farmanli Subscribe to TABLE Magazine’s print edition.