intro to liquor reviewing
So I went to Surdyk's the other day to continue my quest to find my favorite whiskeys... $60 later (which included some of my already-determined favorite vodka and beer), the thought struck me to use my blog for liquor reviews.

After all, my obsessive/geek tendencies aren't just limited to music/economics/business strategy/audio/recording equipment. Might as well make an attempt to be well-rounded in my obsessiveness.


So - we'll start off with the aforementioned favorite vodka:

Tito's.
This one I discovered when the company had a rep giving out tastings at Surdyks. At the time, 2003 or so, I was a connisseur in infancy - I had little to no experience to base my preferences on. Even so, I was immediately able to tell this vodka was quite out of the ordinary.

Some back story. According to the Tito's website, this stuff is made at the only legal distillery in Texas, out of corn. Not that that should matter - a properly distilled vodka shouldn't retain enough signature phenols/esters/etc (for the non-chemically inclined, these are what give many hard liquors their distinctive flavor) to recognize the type of grain originally used in the fermentation. But I'm getting ahead of myself again...

To properly explain exactly why this vodka is so good, I have to touch on the chemical processes involved in making distilled liquors. I'll try to keep it short and link to wikipedia etc. for details for those who may have further interest.

All liquor gets its start with the fermentation process. After grains are 'malted' to convert their naturally occurring starch to yeast-fermentable sugars, yeast is added to the malt and does its thing, taking anywhere between a couple days to a few weeks to complete (depending on the intended result). At this point we have a beer-like substance. Normally the ethanol ("pure" alcohol) concentration in this liquid is in the range of 4-8%, depending on a number of factors.

There's a lot of other stuff in this liquid, though, too. So we have the impure products of fermentation, and for vodka, we want to turn this into ethanol as pure as we can get it. And thus the distillation step.

The basic concept here is pretty simple; ethanol boils at 78.3°C compared to water at 100°C. So we heat up this mixture to 78°, and condense the resulting vapor. The problem is that it's really not quite so easy in practice. All those impurities generated during the fermentation process - though low in concentration - also have boiling points, some of which in the temperature range where we'd rather be vaporizing pure ethanol. Most notably, isopropyl alcohol - rubbing alcohol - boils at 80.3° C. Two degrees isn't a whole lot of room for error, particularly at the volume most vodka producers are dealing with.

And that's where most vodkas go wrong. This is the most obvious problem - in my opinion - with most vodkas, even top shelf brands. There's that unmistakable rubbing alcohol smell to them, which shouldn't be present with a well-distilled vodka.

The other thing is the nature of the distillation process itself. No matter how well you control the distillation temperature, the process itself will not be perfect. Some of the compounds that should be evaporating at a higher or lower temperature will end up coming through the still at ethanol temperatures, and these cause off flavors - or excessive harshness, in the case of higher or lower alchohols. These impurities can be reduced by redistilling the end product, and all vodkas do this to some extent, usually between 3-5 times.

Tito's, however, goes through distillation six times. Compare this to Stolichnaya, 2x, and Smirnoff, 3x, and most "premium" vodkas at 4-5x.

Although that the number of distillations is often used as an indicator of quality by vodka manufacturers, it is not a consistent indicator of quality because of variations in both the the type of distillation used as well as the temperature cutoff points (above and below which undesirable impurities can pass through) used for the process. I've tasted some mediocre vodkas that claim 5x-7x distillations.

(So much for keeping this short. I think I might need to shrink the font size on my blog just for this post.)

Almost all vodkas go through a final filtration process as well. This can be a good or a bad thing; generally it'll clean up the taste of the vodka, further removing impurities and such and refining the flavor. But due to the limitations of filtering, certain impurities - most notably isopropyl alcohol - cannot be removed by this process. So distillers that depend heavily on thorough filtration may produce a clean tasting vodka but it will still remain impurities which cause off flavors and worsen the metabolization byproducts and effects. That's why I prefer a more thorough distillation process, then a final filtration to clean up any last trace of congeners etc.

Anyway. Back to the vodka itself.

In short, Tito is truly a master distiller. This shit is good. The nose is ever so slightly sweet, with one of that overpowering rubbing alcohol smell I criticized earlier. No other vodka I've tasted can match Tito's in this respect. The taste is also incredibly clean; it's just a little bit sweet. Mouthfeel is about perfect - it's warm, as you'd expect from a liquor, but there's little to no "burn" here, just that subtle presence in the mouth and nose as the ethanol evaporates.

As good as Tito's is, I don't generally prefer to drink it straight - which isn't to say it's not suitable for sipping; if you're looking for a sipping vodka this is the one to get. But it's also a fantastic mixer. I enjoy this around 2/5ths vodka with orange, cranberry, or grapefruit juice - that's the point where it's dilute enough to cut the "burn" to nonexistent, but for the vodka's presence and clean character to still come through.

And price? You'd think, what, $25-30 to compete with other ultra-premium brands? Nope. Somehow they manage to price this stuff at around $20. It's not the easiest to find - since it's relatively new in the liquor world, and they're not paying for store placement/magazine ads/etc, not all stores carry it. Surdyk's in Minneapolis keeps it in stock; I've also seen it at one Haskell's location so it's worth checking there as well. If you're not in the Twin Cities area, you might have to ask around at liquor stores or something - it seems to be distributed in most states though (check the Tito's site for details).
- posted by vcmc @  6/03/2006 01:08:00 PM