Once upon a time, way back in the
1990s, vodka was pretty much the coolest thing you could order. It
was the It drink at clubs and bars, and its magical (dearth of)
flavor swept the nation. But, in the last decade, the craft movement
has exploded. “Small batch,” “hand-made,” and “craft” are
the new buzzwords for everything from beer to whiskey and gin to
cocktails.
Meanwhile, vodka has been left out of
the conversation. No longer sitting at the cool kids’ table, it’s been
forced to hang out with a group of aunts in tacky sweaters. So when
arguably the biggest vodka company in the world makes a play to get
in on the craft scene, does it have a chance of fitting in? Or is it
like the time your dad showed up at your prom, wearing Hammer pants
and a D.A.R.E. T-shirt?
It’s Friday afternoon, you’ve made
it through the long week, and it’s time for Happy Hour, Gizmodo’s
weekly booze column. A cocktail shaker full of innovation, science,
and alcohol. Can I get a vodka that’s just vodka-flavored anymore?
What Is Elyx?
Elyx is a new, premium vodka from
Absolut, and everything about it is a play at craft culture. By way
of background: Vodka is the number one selling spirit in the U.S.,
and, globally, it’s number two, just behind South Korea’s insanely
popular Soju. Roughly 520 million cases
of vodka are produced every year, which breaks down to roughly 200
bottles per second. It’s big, and among premium vodkas, Absolut is
the biggest (and its second-biggest among second-tier vodkas, with
Smirnoff being first). In other words, Absolut is the machine that craft culture rages against.
Despite
that, when it comes to Elyx, Absolut basically does everything right
to appeal to craft sensibilities. A fun-fact most people don’t
know about their favorite vodka: Most vodka companies don’t actually
distill their own spirits, at least not at the start of the process.
Surprise! Most buy neutral grain spirits from third-party companies,
and then run them through their own rectifying
stills. Actually,
when you read about spirits that are “distilled six times!” that
typically means it goes through one still with six rectifying
columns. Generally speaking,
each rectifier is designed to remove a different impurity (the most
important being methanol), then they water it down to the proof they
want, bottle it, and slap their label on it.
In
contrast, Absolut buys wheat from 450 different farms in the south of
Sweden and they do all of the distilling themselves at their main
distillery in Nöbbelöv.
The distillery was recently dubbed the world’s most energy efficient
distillery per liter. Not only that, it sits directly on top of an
underground lake that’s more than 400 feet below the surface and has
never been touched by industry, so the water that goes into the vodka
is theoretically super pure. Got a lot of crafty buzzwords in there
already, right? Just you wait.
For
Elyx, Absolut uses single-estate wheat which comes
from just one single farm at Råbelöf
Castle
in Åhus,
Sweden, where they’ve been growing wheat since the 1400s.
According to Absolut, that farm has consistently yielded the best
wheat with the perfect water/starch balance. The wheat undergoes the
usual process at the main distillery to
become a raw spirit, but then
it’s put on a truck and carted over to a second still to be finished.
This
rectification still, known as Column 51, was built in 1921 and is
entirely copper. Copper is extremely important to the process because
it catalyzes trace compounds within the spirit and imparts a
distinctive (if subtle) flavor. This still is entirely hand-operated
by
a small team of highly-skilled distillers. Temperature, flow-rate,
and “every knob, handle, and lever” is adjusted by hand. “From
seed to bottle, everything is done within a 15-mile radius of the
distillery,” according to the literature.
I mean, come on! What could be craftier
than that? “Strained through the mustaches of proud miners then
filtered through the charred stones of the Berlin Wall.” Okay,
maybe that. But otherwise, it ticks basically every other box craft
fetishists could want. Oh, except, it’s made by the monolith that is
Absolut (not some little mom and pop operation), and it’s a vodka. So
how do you sell it?
The Push
To help legitimize Elyx in the cocktail
scene, Absolut has been hiring people with very legit cocktail cred
to be Elyx’s brand ambassadors. In Los Angeles, they got the
highly-respected Lindsay
Nader, whose resume includes places like the legendary P.D.T. in
New York amongst others. Gizmodo caught up with her in L.A. and got the full
rundown on what exactly Absolut is trying here.
“It’s
a hand crafted product, so we’re definitely going after the best
cocktail bars and the best farm-to-table restaurants,” Nader told us. “We’re
looking for a specific type of customer and a specific type of
bartender. We’re being careful with it and we’re testing the waters. We
don’t want to see it get thrown into a Long Island Iced Tea, but
you’ll start seeing it soon
specialty
liquor stores.”
Part of the pushback, of course, is
against Absolut itself, which is seen as a behemoth in the liquor
world. However, as Nader is quick to point out, “Some
brands are big because they make a really good product.” Absolut aside, a lot of what Nader does is focused on vodka as a
category, trying to bring it back into the conversation. She talks
about it in the context of history, of global sales, and of
production, where she stresses the three most important factors for a vodka: water, raw materials (i.e. wheat), and production method. This, of
course, is a nice segue into talking about Elyx, where she gets to
highlight everything that makes it so craftastic.
So,
it’s a very direct play for the cockles of the craft cocktail heart.
But what does the modern cocktail community think of Elyx? We asked.
The Opposition
For starters, we reached out to our
good friend Sother Teague
of Amor y Amargo in NYC, who was recently featured
in the New York Times and has helped us with many Happy Hours in the
past. We asked him what he thought of Elyx, and if it (or any other)
vodka had a chance in the landscape of craft cocktails. He didn’t
pull any punches:
I’ve
tried it. Nothing too special. Vodka, by its very nature, is supposed
to be clean and pure. “Colorless, odorless, neutral distilled
spirit.” It brings very little to the cocktail. Even the simplest
vodka cocktail, the screwdriver (50/50 vodka and orange juice) just
becomes watered-down, boozy orange juice. It does no favor for either
the vodka or the OJ.
Vodka
holds no place in the cocktail pantheon.
However,
vodka certainly holds a place in the pantheon of spirits. It’s just
meant to be drunk alone and preferably well-chilled. Usually paired
with salty or rich foods (Caviar, foie gras, etc).
Basically,
if I were to make you soup and give you the choice of starting with
water or with stock, you’d likely choose stock. Let’s start from a
place of flavor. When making cocktails, I never reach for the “water” that is vodka. Rather, I reach for “stock” to build flavor on.
So there you have it. We also spoke
on the phone to one of the most prominent bartenders in the country,
who asked to remain anonymous due to his close relationship with
Absolut (and its parent company Pernod-Ricard). He was among the
first to be sent a bottle when Absolut began testing the
waters. “It’s
really good,” he said, “but I don’t really understand it. I think they’re taking kind of a strange tack on it, because
it’s high-end.” He
explains further:
We’ve
kind of come full circle on vodka. For
a while it
was like $70 bottles, and it was everywhere. Then it was like, “FUCK
vodka!” It wasn’t cool any more, some
bars stopped serving it entirely.
And now it’s kind of come back around and it’s like, “Yeah,
vodka’s okay for what it is.” But,
nobody
wants a super premium vodka anymore.
I
told him Elyx was selling in the $50 range. His response?
Fifty dollars for a bottle of vodka is completely insane! Like I said, it’s
good, but in this day and age, who gives a shit? Sure, it’s
delicious; I
kept it my freezer, I drank it when I got home from work. But once it
was gone, I never bought another bottle. I bought a $17 bottle.
Surprisingly,
vodka actually appears in two of the cocktails on his menu right now,
out of roughly a half dozen. But he’s careful to point out that vodka
isn’t
the prominent ingredient. “It’s just used to make the drinks a
little stronger without changing the flavors. And I’m sure as hell
not using a $50 vodka for that,” he
said.
“When vodka is really, really bad it’s just kind of bad,
and when it’s really, really good, it’s just kind of good.”
I
relayed this last quote to Lindsay Nader for her reaction.
“I’d
love to sit down with him and have him do a blind tasting,” She
said.
“Also, regular
Absolut
and Elyx
mix very differently. Regular is great in shaken, citrusy, bright
drinks. Elyx is great for simple, unadorned drinks. Like the vesper or a vodka martini. It stands on its own so well. ” Challenge accepted.
The Taste Test
Absolut
sent me a bottle of Elyx for this article so I could check it out. I also went
to my corner liquor store and grabbed
a bottle of plain
old Absolut,
so I could compare and contrast. A poured a large glass of each and
went to work. While they’re definitely more similar than they are
different, they certainly aren’t identical.
Going
back and forth, smelling each of them, I found that Elyx
has a much milder odor. You’d
think it was lower proof, but nope, Elyx
is actually slightly higher (84.6 proof vs 80). They both just smell
like a neutral grain spirit, which is to say it doesn’t smell like
much.
Sipping
each (and drinking water and eating crackers in between) I found that
regular
Absolut is a bit sweeter and is definitely simpler. It’s just a
very straight up, “Yup, that’s what vodka tastes like.” Nice
and clean, smooth, and definitely inoffensive.
Elyx
definitely tastes a bit drier, and there’s a little something more
going on on the palate. If I didn’t know how it was made, I’d
probably have trouble articulating exactly what the difference is; but, because I do know, I feel like it’s a very subtle copper taste,
which I assume is imparted by the continuous copper
still
at the end. It’s got a little bit of a tannic edge to it you can
feel on your teeth. Just slightly sour and bitter.
So, yes, it does indeed have more “character,” but it’s very
subtle.
I
then
tried a Vesper (one
of the cocktails Lindsay and Absolut both recommended) made
with Elyx,
and it was good. It didn’t change my life, but it was
light and refreshing, and it certainly packed a punch. I then tried
the same drink but with regular Absolut. It did taste a little
rounder, and a little sweeter. It didn’t seem quite as dry, and
perhaps there wasn’t quite as much complexity. But, to be honest,
the difference was extremely subtle. While the two versions of Absolut
taste different, these differences are almost completely obscured by
the gin (Beefeater 24) and Lillet Blanc.
So
what’s the verdict? Like the dissenters said, it’s really good. If I
was to keep a vodka in my freezer that I’d use for sipping, would I
prefer Elyx over regular Absolut? Yeah. But would I prefer it by a
margin of $20 a bottle? No. Honestly, I’d probably just pick up a big bottle of something decent and keep it in my freezer for a rainy day. But, then
again, I’m not a vodka connoisseur. If you are, it’s definitely at least worth
trying to find it at your local, high-end bar and giving it a taste. Ideally a blind-taste. Once you’ve taken a swig or two, let us know what you think, and check back next week for the next Happy Hour.
