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Positive Trends in Drunkenness
Aug 25th, 2008 by Pinback

I would like to alert you all to what I feel is a very positive trend, at least as positive as something can be in the sinful, destructive realm of alcohol and alcoholic beverages.

The topic of today’s report is: VODKA.

Some (your author included) consider vodka the purest and most “noble” of the ignoble playground of the demon alcohol. Going through the simplest distillation process, introducing no flavoring or adjuncts, vodka still today represents distilled spirits at their most elegant. With all of the thousands of offerings at your local liquor store, all the flavors out there, all the wacky concoctions you could ever ask for, to me there is still nothing so sublime as a shot of chilled vodka.

Now, used to be there were two general types of vodka: Cheap-ass shit, and decent shit. Vodka by its very nature doesn’t have a ton of room for quality differential — at its best it’s nearly imperceptible. The good stuff, maybe in the $20 range, would be generally smoother and cleaner than the cheap crap.

Then (I am making up history here, but this is just how it seemed to happen) Grey Goose came along with a pretty bottle, slapped a $40 pricetag on it, and proclaimed with lots of flowery descriptions from “respected critics” that this was “ultra premium”, blowing away even the high end stuff with it’s — what, 8-times filtering through charcoal and baby’s hair.

Much like bottled water, nobody in their right mind thought it would take off. And much like bottled water, Americans with too much money and too fragile an ego just gobbled it up.

Then it was on. The race to come up with the fanciest bottle, the best marketing campaign, and the highest price tag was officially afoot. It worked, it continues to work, and everyone is making a ton of money off it. Off vodka, the least process- and resource-intensive of any liquor.

It appeared there would be no bucking the trend, and it started to look like you’d eventually end up having to choose between a plastic bottle filled with turpentine, or a fifty dollar bottle with a bird and a fancy font on it.

So I am happy to announce that it seems that in the last year or two, there is a new trend taking place within this maelstrom of absurdity. Seems Grey Goose placed so low in enough blind taste tests that some people actually started to wake up to two important facts:

1. The “ultra premium” brands are no better, and often worse, than “lower” brands costing a fraction of the cost.

2. There is no reason good vodka cannot be cheap.

So now we are seeing the very welcome backlash of low-priced, high quality vodka, and all you’re giving up is the fancy bottle and whatever sick sense of “style points” you thought you were getting by ordering overpriced garbage.

My current two favorites in the under-$20 set are Tito’s, made in Texas from corn, costing about $17 for a 750ml bottle, and my current King of the Hill, Sobieski, made in Poland from rye, winning all sorts of blind tests, incredibly clean, and coming in at the seemingly ridiculous price of $11 a bottle, less than Smirnoff. But this is how much it should cost. Everything above this is marketing.

If this post does nothing more, I just hope anyone reading this who ever has occasion to buy vodka or a cocktail with vodka in it, skip the Grey Goose, the Trump, the Hangar One, the Van Gogh — basically anything they put in the “locked case” at your local booze shop. DON’T BELIEVE HIS LIES!

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