Slate Sips Vodka

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Which vodka is the best? By Alex Abramovich

Slate concludes that despite being made primarily of water and alcohol, not all vodkas are created equal:

But if all vodkas tasted alike, there'd be no reason to favor a $30 bottle of Armadale over a $12 magnum of Fleischmann's. In fact, all vodkas are not alike. Vodka can be distilled in a good many ways, from a great many substances, including wheat, rye, beets, corn, potatoes, and sugar cane. (In Russia, the Yukos oil conglomerate recently made headlines for marketing a vodka distilled from hemp seeds.) As a result, each brand has a distinct smell, flavor, aftertaste, and burn (i.e., the burning sensation vodka creates as it goes down your gullet). The grain-based vodkas, which are the most popular, tend to be smooth and can even taste fruity. Vegetable-based vodkas are often (and often unfairly) dismissed as being harsh and medicinal.

My Russian neighbor prefers Absolut, which was rated surprisingly low. Second place, however, went to a Scottish vodka, Armadale, distilled on the Isle of Skye.