THE SPIRIT OF PURE FLAVOR
Vodka infuses the senses with its ethereal presence.
The handblown glass bottle in the freezer contains a clear liquid. Frost forms quickly on its sides when I take it out, and the liquid steams as I fill a small glass. It has an indescribable aroma, and the smooth, dense weight of triple-distilled vodka.
I savor the intense flavor of habanero chilies.
Then my head explodes. Is this vodka or liquid fire? The heat radiates in my mouth and throat for minutes before evaporating cleanly — a beautiful, exciting sensation.
I made my first home-brewed pepper vodka in the mid-1990s. It was inspired by the oyster shooters at the Elite Cafe on Fillmore Street in San Francisco: a freshly shucked oyster in a shot glass with a little horseradish and a dollop of the bartender’s homemade pepper-infused vodka. The bartender told me he’d tried the commercial pepper vodkas first, but the oyster shuckers demanded a fruitier, more intense flavor, so he experimented with his own mix of jalapeńo and serrano chilies until he pleased their hardened palates. “Habaneros tasted the best to me,” he confided, “but they made it too hot for most people. If you like hot stuff, you should try it at home.”
I did, with spectacular success. Not only did I discover a remarkable tool for attitude adjustment after a particularly stressful day, I rediscovered one of the ancient principles of sensory alchemy.
LASTING IMPRESSION
Vodka is the ultimate flavor delivery vehicle. The official definition
of vodka is an odorless, flavorless spirit. Yet any connoisseur will assure
you that the crystalline weight and purity of a fine vodka offers a
sensation that is, if not exactly a flavor, an unmistakable impression. And
I’ll tell you what that is: It’s anti-flavor,
a kind of expectant void in which the senses are poised to receive
excitement. Somewhere in the balance is a beautiful Zen-like stillness where
the essence of flavor simply is, awaiting only the specific nuances that
will make the mind say, “Ah, lemon … peppers … currants … ”
Distillers have known this for a long time. Flavor-infused spirits are as old as distillation itself (plus or minus a thousand years), although flavor was probably not the object of early infusions. In fact, historians believe the earliest use of distilled spirits was for infusing medicinal herbs to make them more easily absorbed and thus more effective. But happy hour couldn’t have been far behind.
Gin, the archetypal flavored vodka, began as a medicinal infusion of juniper berries during the 17th century — and caught on right away with perfectly healthy people as a pleasure-inducing beverage. Within decades, its cheap, hastily distilled iterations (largely flavored with juniper berries) were making thousands of healthy people sick, which ultimately led to legislation against its pernicious effects on society, such as Britain’s Tippling Act of 1751. Happily for cocktail enthusiasts, gin regained its reputation in the 20th century. The Martini — properly made with gin, despite James Bond’s best efforts on vodka’s behalf — became the universal symbol of sophisticated revelry. Yet gin’s rather extreme combination of savory and herbaceous flavors remains an acquired taste, while vodka, with its ethereal presence/absence on the palate, has become the once and future king of white spirits. Rum and tequila may storm the gates occasionally, but the monarch remains unperturbed.
Vodka’s natural affinity with fruit and vegetable juices has given us such enduring barroom icons as the Greyhound (grapefruit), the Bloody Mary (tomato), and the Cosmopolitan (cranberry). Perhaps it was inevitable that hedonistic appetites awakened by the party-time atmosphere of the Roaring ’90s would release a flood of flavored vodkas. They were embraced by an entire new generation of social drinkers with dot-com cash falling out of their pockets.
A SPLASH OF FLAVOR
I share the prevalent opinion among spirit aficionados that no other
tipple can match the engaging complexity of a fine gin’s intricate sensory
profile. Yet pleasure needn’t be all intricate and complex. Don’t take my
word for it. Just order an Absolut Mandrin Martini the next time you find
yourself at an outside table for drinks on a balmy spring evening. And tell
the bartender to hold the vermouth — it’s perfect just shaken and poured
into a Martini glass with a thin film of ice, and the citrus twist of choice
to finish (I like a thin spiral of lime, myself).
Sweden’s Absolut has led the flavor charge by infusing its pure distillation of winter wheat with a range of bold yet delicate flavors. Each is, in fact, a subtle balance of several complementary ingredients, similar to gin in their harmony within a strong theme. The initial offering, Absolut Citron (made primarily with lemon and lime), was such a success that it begat Mandrin (primarily mandarin and other oranges), Kurant (black currant), and Peppar (various chilies, including fresh jalapeńo).
Not to be outdone by its closest rival, Russia’s Stolichnaya now has five flavored versions of its popular grain vodka on the market: Limonnaya (lemon), Ohranj (orange), Razberi (raspberry), Strasberi (strawberry), and Vanil (vanilla). I’m sorry to say that, to my taste, most of them have an artificial quality. However, I must confess that I became modestly addicted to Vanil for a while last summer, when I took to drinking it on ice after a hard day of sailboat racing. Its clear vanilla scent and whisper of sweetness had a magical way of cutting through layers of salt and muscle fatigue. But then I added a few drops of pure Madagascar vanilla to a shaker of ice and Ketel One, my favorite all-around vodka, and never looked back. Sorry, Stoli.
Ketel One Citroen is the clearest and finest citrus vodka I’ve come across. Its edge, in my book, is that it is made the old-fashioned way — not with flavor additives, but by simply steeping fresh lemons in the newly distilled vodka. That gives it a pure, focused, long-lasting lemon flavor that the ultra-smooth spirit delivers to the taste buds in a crystal bowl.
That said, even Ketel One pales in the fruit department beside the brilliantly intense fruit-flavored vodkas from a tiny northern California distillery called Charbay. The Karakasevic family began distilling 13 generations ago in Eastern Europe. Since 1983, master distiller Miles Karakasevic, along with his wife, Susan, and son, Marko, have operated a still in the woods high above Napa Valley on Spring Mountain. Karakasevic has become famous for his brandies, ports, and eaux-de-vie. Last year, son Marko initiated the vodka project.
The flavors are Blood Orange, Meyer Lemon, Key Lime, and Ruby Red Grapefruit. Each is an infusion of perfectly ripe fruit in the Karakasevics’ remarkably concentrated, luxuriant vodka. I especially like the clear, high-toned orange note in the Meyer Lemon. The Key Lime is almost too intense alone, but a little soda makes every sip a sojourn on some Caribbean beach. Blood Orange, which takes color as well as flavor from the fresh fruit, leaves Absolut Mandrin in the dust. And why bother mixing a Greyhound with canned grapefruit juice when you can sip Charbay’s Ruby Red Grapefruit Vodka on ice? It’s the difference between watching a video and seeing a fresh print of the film on a wide screen with THX sound.
A GINGER NOTION
One magical evening, not long ago, I saw a big jar full of clear liquid
behind the bar at Straits Cafe, a mecca for Shanghai cuisine. The bottom of
the jar was covered with pale chunks of some rooty-looking thing.
I knew instinctively what I was looking at. “My own ginger-infused vodka,” confirmed the bartender proudly.
I also knew what I had to do. And I did, using smoother-than-smooth Grey Goose Vodka and organic blue ginger from Hawaii. There, my friends, is a drink that will raise the dead — so perhaps we’ve come full circle to medicinal infusions. I’ve taken to drinking it on the rocks with a dash of blue curacao (inspired by the sub-species of ginger). It’s my new favorite sundowner.
Meanwhile, I’m waiting to see which of the big vodka companies will be the first to introduce ginger to their line of flavors. And, by the way, my formula just might be for sale. Let’s have a drink and negotiate.
Rod Smith is wine columnist for the Los Angeles Times and recipient of the James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for magazine writing on spirits, wine, and beer.