Category: trips

Bars in Japan: Whisky Bars

On my five-day visit to Japan with Suntory whiskies I hit over 20 bars. I think the best way to talk about them will be in groups. First up: Whisky Bars.

The difference between the various styles of bars is subtle and I'm defining them as I see them. I'll be describing whisky bars, cocktail bars, highball and standing bars, and pubs/clubs/dives. I only hit one or two izakaya places.

Whisky bars specialize in whisky, of course. Most of them have a huge range of single-malt scotch whisky (100 different bottles is a start) and also serve whisky highballs. Many have a cocktail list too, but typically these list just a few classic drinks like Martinis, Manhattans, and Gimlets. The focus is on whisky rocks and whisky highballs.

Whisky bars I didn't visit include ones with names like Bar Argyll, Bar Caol Ila, Bar Main Malt, Cask, Kask, and Malt House Islay. Many are associated with either Yamazaki or Nikka whisky and will serve a better selection of those whiskies than of the other brand. It's sort of like how fast food restaurants usually serve either Coke or Pepsi but not both.

Highlander, one of the bars in the fabulous Hotel Okura Tokyo, has red plaid carpet and a clubby, old-world look. I tried a few interesting whiskies there, including the stunning Hibiki 21 year old blended Japanese whisky.

(Image from the hotel's website.)

K6, in Kyoto near the Yamazaki whisky, is an upstairs bar with shelves around three sides that stocks 600 single malts! We had a nice chat with the bartender and a few unusual drams. And then we ordered haggis pizza, because if offered Scottish food in Italian format in a bar in Japan you just say yes.

Oil is in a special place in Tokyo called Shinjuku Golden Gai. It is full of tiny bars stacked on top of each other, many the size of a bedroom. Some welcome regulars only; others are open to tourists. Some of them you're practically climbing a latter to get into.

(Bar directory of Golden Gai.)

I got a feeling my hosts were not all that interested in taking me there, but there I went. We went to two bars, Oil and Bigri Bar (that I'll talk about later).

Oil serves two things for the most part: Jack Daniels and Triangle Shochu. You can buy a bottle and have it there waiting for you on your next visit. The bartender, who appears to be the main owner as his picture is all over the place, is a heavily-tattooed, long haired rock and roll type. The rest of the decor is dedicated to actor Yusaku Matsuda, who was in the 1989 movie Black Rain.

(Cartoon of the bartender.)

When I ordered a whisky on the rocks expecting scorn and derision from too-cool-for-school guy, he took a large, perfectly clear piece of ice, put it into a tumbler glass, carefully stirred it with a barspoon a full minute or so to cool the glass, and poured the whisky. Nicely done.

There are several bars called Yamazaki Bar so I'm not sure how to identify this one by address, but it was staffed with all women bartenders wearing suits. So it's not really a "hostess bar" where you are paying for female company.

Anyway, they do a very nice presentation for whisky on the rocks. They call it "tornado" style when they serve it with a few big pieces of ice in an oversized Bordeaux wine glass. Then you can have it "pierced"- they bring out a box of garnishes and you can choose from them. They include simple miniature roses, raspberries, lime/orange slices, mint, and you can dip any of the above in a little caramel or honey.

It was a classy, easy, and affordable way to make a drink on the rocks a little more special.

Next post: Cocktail bars!

November 21, 2011
A Visit to the Yamazaki Distillery in Japan

Yesterday I wrote about visiting the Hakushu distillery in Japan. Today I'll write about Suntory's other single-malt distillery, Yamazaki. It is located between Kyoto and Osaka, at the convergence of several rivers. I believe they said the distillery welcomes 100,000 visitors each year.

(Mount Fuji as seen from the train to Kyoto.)

The Yamazaki distillery was built in 1923 and launched its first whisky, the White Label, in 1929. That whisky is still made today.

The distillery location was chosen because of its water (as are most distilleries), also sought out by Sen no Rikyo, the inventor of the Japanese tea ceremony. One of his tea houses from the 1500s still stands nearby.

Like at Hakushu they import malted barley from Scotland, then grind it, mash it, ferment it, distill it, and age it on site. At Yamazaki they use a combination of wooden and stainless steel washbacks (fermentation vessels). They use the same yeasts as at Hakushu, but sometimes in different proportions.

They have six differently-shaped pairs of stills to make whiskies with many different flavor characteristics, further enhanced by aging in five different types of barrels.

Hogsheads (reassembled ex-bourbon barrels at a larger size), puncheons (large barrels made of new American oak), and Mizunara (Japanese oak) barrels are made at the cooperage in Japan at their grain distillery.

Spanish oak sherry butts are made for them in Spain, and ex-bourbon barrels are what they are.

Mizunara oak grows in the north of Japan, and sometimes in Hokkaido. I used to describe its flavor as similar to sandalwood incense, but on this visit I was tasting it more as a combination of sticky pine tree and cedar. Either way, it's got spice.

They still have a cask from 1924 in the warehouse (though they've swapped out the whisky) and you can see the Cadiz sherry stamp beneath the Yamazaki one.

We tasted whiskies aged in three types of oak: Mizunara, Spanish ex-sherry, and new American oak puncheons.

From the Yamazaki website, "White oak adds vanilla and coconut flavours during the aging process. Tannins and other polyphenols contained in Spanish oak casks leach into the whisky, imbuing it with a deeper reddish hue compared with white oak casks. Whiskies aged in Spanish oak casks typically have fruity, chocolate notes. Over long periods of aging the Japanese oak casks add a distinctively Eastern touch to the whisky, endowing it with sweet fragrances reminiscent of incense with a hint of citrus. This unique flavour has been gaining the Yamazaki brand new adherents around the world."

At Yamazaki they have six different still shapes, use five types of barrels, and barley at two peating levels. This adds up to 6x5x2 = 60 different whiskies produced at this distillery to be used in single malt and in blends.

Speaking of blends, the Hibiki blend is assembled at this distillery as well. (I think the lower-end blended whiskies that we don't get in the States are put together here too.) The blends have aged grain, column-distilled whiskies along with the single malts from the Hakushu and Yamazaki distilleries.

At the distillery, there is a tasting room where you can try a variety of distillery-only products like 100% sherry cask Yamazaki the 1980s and white dog.

They also have a library of their whisky experiments.

And an advertising museum. I wish they'd bring back Uncle Torys.

Now that we've talking about how they make Hakushu, Yamazaki, and Hibiki, I'll get into where and how to drink them in Japan over the next few posts.

November 18, 2011
A Visit to the Hakushu Distillery in Japan

I visited the Hakushu distillery owned by Suntory, located in the Yamanashi prefecture, about two hours by train from Tokyo in Japan. There is a new Hakushu single malt whisky on the US market.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Hakushu was built in 1973 and is located at a high elevation – 700 meters above sea level. (Scotland's highest distilleries are Dalwhinnie and Braeval, both about 355 meters.) On the train ride there, your ears are continually clogging as you change elevation. The distillery is on a large site to protect its water source, and doubles as a bird sanctuary.

The Yamazaki distillery used to grow at least some of its own grain up until around 1970, but now they import all their barley. It is grown and malted in Scotland and shipped to Japan. Suntory buys malted barley at two different peating levels; basically unpeated and at highly peated at at 25 ppm phenol content.

They grind the malted barley on site, then put it in the mash tun with hot water to expose the fermentable sugars and transfer it to the wooden washbacks for fermentation. They ferment it using both brewers' and distillers' yeast.

They have six pairs of stills at Hakushu; two of them the same shape and one not currently used. Thus they have four active still shapes producing different whiskies. As there is another whisky boom, they're currently distilling 24/7.

As Hakushu is at a very high elevation, the whisky ages more slowly with less wood influence on the spirit. Though they use five types of barrels at the other single malt distillery Yamakazi, at Hakushu they focus on two: ex-bourbon and hogshead. (Hogshead barrels are reconstructed bourbon barrels made a little larger, holding 230 liters rather than 180.) They do, however, age ex-sherry butts (Spanish oak, 480 liters), and puncheons (new American white oak, 480 liter).

They rechar some barrels after using them to age whisky about four times, but after they rechar they only use them one more time. Distillery General Manager Mike Miyamoto says that the whisky aged in rechar barrels is more astringent than with regular ex-bourbon barrels.

The smell of a recharred barrel is amazing! It's like campfire wood and sugars, even marshmallowish.

At Hakushu they use only racked warehouses, in earthquake-safe metal racks that go about 13 levels high.

Here they use peated and unpeated barley, four still shapes, and five types of casks (though they focus on two.) They say that between them (2x4x5) they make 40 different types of whisky at Hakushu.

Regardless, to make up the Hakushu single malt they primarily include three whiskies distilled on-site: unpeated malt distillate aged in hogshead barrels, unpeated malt distillate aged in sherry butts, and peated malt distillate aged in ex-bourbon barrels.

We sampled each component separately and then the Hakushu 12 and 18 year old blends. With three widely different distillates, Hakushu is almost more of a blended malt (vatted malt) than a single malt.

November 17, 2011
A Visit to the Cointreau Distillery in Angers, France
This October I visited the Cointreau distillery in Angers, France. Angers is located southwest of Paris, about equidistant from Paris and Bordeaux.

I hadn't realized, but Cointreau was not originally famous for orange liqueur, but for Guignolet, a cherry liqueur. Cherries were brought the region by King Rene', who lived at the Chateau D'Angers.

We visited this castle and its tapestry called The Apocalypse; the world's longest.

(This way to the Apocalypse!)

The original Cointreau distillery was located in downtown Angers, but has since relocated. We drove to the distillery.

There, Alfred Cointreau explained the process.

The Distillation of Cointreau

Bitter and sweet orange peels are purchased from Brazil, Africa, and Spain. The dried peels at a certain ratio, along with some fresh peels, 96 percent neutral sugar beet alcohol, and water, are placed into the stills. The peels sit on a plate in the stills to make them easier to remove after distillation. They macerate this mixture overnight before distilling.

The stills for the first distillation are shaped like water tanks, made of copper.

After the first distillation, the alcohol passes up and over the tall, curved lyne arm to the second still.

The second still is a column.

(The straight pipes going back to the first stills are a type of reflux.)

In this one room they make the world's supply of Cointreau- 15 million bottles annually.

Due to local restrictions, the Cointreau for Brazil and Argentina is distilled here as usual to make a concentrated Cointreau, but then diluted and sweetened with sugar cane alcohol and sugar cane sugar, while the rest of the world gets beet alcohol/sugar. It would be fun to compare the two to see if one could detect any differences.

Production Parameters

We were then given a talk by Cointreau's Master Distiller Bernadette Langlais. Some information learned:
- The sweet oranges lend the orangey taste; the bitter peels bring a fresh, zesty lemon/lime notes
- Bitter oranges are harvested when still green
- The peels are either dried in the sun or in ovens
- There are 220 different essential oils in orange peels
- The bitter molecules from orange pith don't carry over during distillation. Thus they don't worry about the thickness of the peels. However, when something is just macerated (for example, limoncello) and not distilled then it is important to not get pith on the peels.
- When they add water to reduce Cointreau to proof, the essential oils in the peels cause the liqueur to louche; to get cloudy like when you add water to absinthe. They centrifuge the Cointreau to make it clear again. [*Update* This isn't quite true – see this post for clarification on the centrifuge process.]
- Of competing brands, they say that Cointreau has the highest amount of essential oils and the lowest amount of added sugar.
- The used orange peels go for cattle feed after distillation.
- Because of the volatility of the essential oils in Cointreau, bartenders should not leave a pour spout on the bottle overnight- some of the flavor will evaporate.
History

As mentioned previously, Cointreau originally produced cherry and many other liqueurs. (Today they still produce other products at the distillery but not under their name.)

As mentioned in this post, the Dutch were the first to make Curacao using bitter oranges from that island. When the French became famous for their liqueurs, curacao evolved into triple sec.

Cointreau initially produced a product called curacao, and then a 'curacao triple sec' and then a 'triple sec."

Eventually many brands of triple sec came on the market. Cointreau's label used to have a big "Triple Sec" and a small "Cointreau" but later reversed their relative size. Today Cointreau doesn't even use 'triple sec' in its descriptor.

As we know, the 'sec' refers to the dry, or less sweetened style of liqueur. Their opinion about the word 'triple' (the two arguments being either triple distillation/triple refined, or three times as orangey) is three times as concentrated orange flavor. The company had also produced a 'triple creme de menthe' and other 'triple' products, which I think backs up this argument.
October 28, 2011
A Trip to Italy with Pallini Limoncello

I am one lucky son-of-a-gun. This September I visited Rome and the Amalfi Coast with Pallini Limoncello. Though we began the trip in Rome and went to the Amalfi Coast later, I'll explain the process of making limoncello in the proper order.

The Lemons of the Amalfi Coast

The lemons for Pallini are sfusato ("elongated") lemons, so-named for their tapered shape. They are also sometimes called feminine lemons because each side looks like a nipple. These are slightly different from Sorrento lemons that are more football-shaped.

These lemons are low in acid; very sweet. In fact we had an unsweetened lemonade made with them. It was tart, but still drinkable. Even the pith isn't that bitter- we had a 'salad' made with these lemons soaked in balsamic vinegar and salt – and you could eat the whole thing – fruit, pith, and rind.

But for limoncello purposes, they're interested in the skin of the lemons only. The skins of sfusato lemons are highly aromatic and rich in essential oils.

These lemons grow along the Amalfi Coast in a most improbable way. Actually, the whole coast doesn't make much sense – it is all incredibly steep and rocky, with sharp inclines from the mountains down to the ocean. Picture the drive along Highway 1 in California if people had build houses all the way down to the ocean.

Carved into the cliffs are terraced gardens on which they grow lemons, along with eggplants, grapes, tomatoes, olives, and everything else you can think of. It's a surprisingly productive area given that the base is just rocks.

But the cliff-side growing arrangement means lots and lots of sunshine for these plants. The lemons grow so big and so productively that if these were just normal trees growing on their own, the branches would almost surely snap beneath the weight of the fruit.

Thus the farmers have developed a system to support the lemon tree branches, a pergola made of chestnut wood. This forms a lemon tree umbrella of sorts, with hundreds of huge lemons dangling from above.

(Bonus cat picture!)

The terraced lemon groves present some difficulties in harvesting, as you'd imagine. The lemons are all picked by hand as they ripen, then must be carried uphill to the next road that can be pretty far when you've got a heavy crate of lemons on your back.

Processing Lemons

After the lemons are harvested, they're transported by truck along the windy (and terrifying to those of us scared of heights) road to the processing center. We visited the one Pallini uses: Castier Agrumi De Riso.

When the lemons come in to the factory, they are first washed and then sorted. The very best lemons are sold in crates to stores and restaurants. The rest are peeled to make limoncello.

To do this, they use a machine that peels two lemons at a time. It is hand-loaded and seems to frequently jam – no wonder with sticky, oily peels involved. In this video, you can see the machine working.

The peels that come out are then vacuum-sealed into bags and sent to Pallini to use.

Making Limoncello

Pallini's distillery (it's not actually a distillery as they don't distill there but a rectification plant; still I'll call it a distillery for the sake of clarity) is where they make limoncello from the lemon peels.

Though once there were 30 distilleries in Rome, Pallini is the only one left. Originally, the distillery was located a few hundred yards from the Pantheon in central Rome but now it is in an industrial park-type area a good 30-40 minutes drive from the city center.

To make the limoncello, first they soak the peels in high-proof alcohol (I think around 96%) to extract their flavor. Though they didn't tell us the exact time, I inferred the extraction takes less than a couple of days.

Then they blend this concentrated lemon alcohol with more neutral alcohol (that is distilled from Italian sugar beet molasses), water, and a sugar syrup (made from crystallized sugar beet sugar). To make the flavor pop, they also add essential oils from the same lemons.

Somewhere in the process, they homogenize the ingredients so they retain a fresh flavor and do not separate or oxidize. We tasted several other brands of limoncello and most had a slightly musty flavor of oxidation compared to Pallini.

Other Products

Pallini also makes a Raspicello (useful as a Chambord substitute, or perhaps in a Bramble?) and a Peachcello (for the Bellini). These are actually made by distilling the berries and peaches, and adding fruit juice or fresh berries back in at bottling time. The production seemed pretty interesting but we didn't go into it in detail.

Pallini makes around 150 products, which you'd never guess given the size of the distillery. The most famous one, however, is Sambuca Romana. They created this brand but sold it to Diageo in the 1980s. They still produce it for Diageo though. It's actually a pretty interesting product on its own; a blend of distillates from three kinds of anise, elderflower, angelica, and other herbs and spices.

Anyway, that's it for my Pallini trip. Limoncello is an incredibly straight-forward liqueur made from very special lemons grown in an absolutely stunning place.

October 13, 2011
A Trip to Sweden with Purity Vodka

This summer I went to Sweden (twice this year!) with Purity vodka. Purity is located not far from Malmo, across the water from Copenhagen, in a building on the estate of Ellinge Castle.

Now, Ellinge doesn't look like a typical castle, but there has been one in some form here since the early 14th century when the area belonged to Denmark. The building changed a lot over the years, but it still has a moat.

Currently the castle owners live in a big house also on the property, but rent out the castle itself for weddings and other events. I got to sleep there one night. I've never slept somewhere with a moat before, so that was awesome.

The castle is beautifully furnished with antiques and paintings, including one of Jesus turning water into wine at a dinner party. That's not the only connection the castle has to alchemy: there has always been a distillery on the property, as was commonplace in farming areas. (The farmlands around the castle grow things like wheat, barley, and rye, but they are not used in Purity because they're not certified organic.)

Making Vodka

Purity is made in this little building just across the moat from the castle. It's a tiny building, but they only do one part of the process here. Purity is a blend of a neutral, column-distilled spirit with a flavorful house-distilled spirit, brought down to proof with a blend of natural mineral water and deionized water. At the distillery, they produce the custom distillate.

The distillate made at the castle is a blend of wheat and barley, which is combined and fermented at a brewery near Copenhagen that is certified organic. Once that mash is brought here, the work begins.

The still has a pot still base with two columns attached. The distillate passes through the pot, then continues through the columns in a batch process. Each column has eight plates in it. At each plate the spirit passing through touches it and condenses.

If my understanding of this still is correct, what makes it different from others is that 95 percent of the spirit that condenses at each plate doesn't drop down to the plate beneath it, but all the way down to the bottom of the column. They consider each plate a full distillation, so the pot, plus eight plates in each of the two columns is 17 distillations. They run this process twice, so they figure it as 34 distillations before they get the final spirit.

I don't place a lot of importance on advertised number of distillations (as opposed to the taste), but the math makes sense.

Speaking of taste, we tasted the core spirit that comes out of the still. It is incredibly flavorful, tasting of strawberry jam, bread dough, blueberry figs, and a finish that's all herbal and wintergreen. In the mouth, a spiciness leaps out. It's quite an amazing distillate, and once I tasted it on its own I can now taste all of that in the finished bottle of Purity.

It takes them 10 hours for the first distillation, and because their cuts are so small, it takes 7 of the first distillations to get enough low wines to do the second distillation, which takes 6 hours. So that means to get one 'batch' of the flavorful spirit for Purity, it takes 76 hours.

Purity also tastes and smells of minerals, and I suspect that is from the mineral water used to dilute it to proof. Blender Thomas Kuuttanen says that it reminds him of rain falling on brackish water, and I can totally see that.

In the process of developing Purity Kuuttanen tried to use all mineral water, but found some minerals came out of solution after bottling, and left a white ring around the neck of the bottle. His task was finding the right balance between mineral and de-ionized water so that this didn't happen.

We were talking at the distillery about how rare it is to have more than one ingredient used in the mash of a vodka. Purity uses wheat and barely. Reyka uses the same two ingredients. Hangar One blends grape distillate with neutral distillate (wheat I think).

Anyway, I'll be writing a lot more about Purity for the Tasting Panel magazine, so I'll be sure to link to those in the future.

October 11, 2011
Hunting Bison in Poland with ZU Vodka

No bison were harmed in the writing of this blog post.

This summer I flew to Warsaw with ZU vodka, known in the rest of the world as Zubrowka. Zubrowka is bison grass vodka; vodka flavored with grass. The stuff tastes like caramel and jasmine and hay, and makes apple juice taste like apple pie.

Unfortunately, that delicious flavor comes from coumarin, a naturally-occurring compound that is banned as a food additive in the US. It is also in the tonka bean, which is why we can't have a historically-accurate recreation of Abbot's Bitters in the US either. (See this NYTimes story for more on that.)

(Mmm, delcious Coumarin. Image from Wikipedia.)

Coumarin is a blood thinner (anti-coagulant), and it is used to make Coumadin, a medicine that some people with blood clot disorders have to take before flying. Ironically, one of the people on the press trip had to take a shot of Coumadin before coming to Poland. If they had real Zubrowka in the US, she could have just chugged a bottle.

They've recreated the flavor of Zubrowka in ZU, using naturally-derived ingredients. In a blind taste test you can guess which is which, but they're pretty close.

A Trip to the Forest

We took a train for a few hours from Warsaw to Bialystok, where the distillery is located. But before seeing that, we went to see the Bialowieza Forest where the bison live and the bison grass grows.

The forest has various levels of protection in different parts. The first visit we took to it was by carriage, to the most protected part. The carriages aren't just for old-timey charm: no mechanical transportation is allowed in the forest and you must be accompanyed by a licensed guide.

The reason this forest is special is that it has for centuries been the protected property of the kings. It was used as their personal hunting ground for bison and a food reserve for the army. The forest is a UNESCO biosphere preserve and on the World Heritage List.

The forest is quite pretty, with tall skinny trees. This is the type of forest that would have covered most of Europe long ago.

Looking for Bison in All the Wrong Places

But to actually see the bison, you've got to get up pretty early in the morning. At 5AM we drove into the forest (this time, outside of the strict reserve but still where bison can be found) and walked along a path looking for them.

Unfortunately, none were to be found. The guide says at this time of the year the bison go into the deep forest to hide from the mosquitoes and flies, the very same ones that were biting us ferociously.

But it wasn't all for nothing. We also went searching for bison grass. The bison grass for Zubrowka is hand harvested by 21 or 22 families who know secret spots to pick it. Apparently you can grow bison grass on farms, but it doesn't have the same aroma as the natural stuff.

We walked down a trail in the forest, veered off it, cut through the woods, and found a whopping three blades of bison grass. Obviously, this wasn't one of the spots where they harvest it. But still, success!

We did manage to see actual bison, though they weren't free-roaming. We went to a reserve (sort of an outdoor zoo) where they show off the bison and other forest animals. Hi bison!

At the Distillery

After our forest visit, we went to see the distillery in Bialystok. The place is huge, as they make a lot of vodka for their unflavored Zubrowka (not available in the US) as well as other brands. Interestingly, this is not the start-to-finish point for ZU and other brands.

Closer to the farmlands where the rye is grown, there are smaller distilleries that do the fermentation and initial distillation. Polmos Bialystok (the name of this distillery) refines the distillation and adds any flavoring.

The bison grass is stored in a dark, refrigerated room in big paper bags.

The grass used to flavor the vodka is soaked in alcohol and water in a big washing machine thing for a couple days. They make a concentrate of the bison grass flavor, then add whatever amount they need to the final blend.

The grass that's used to decorate each bottle (there is a blade of grass in each) is soaked in higher-proof alcohol to suck out all the coumarin. It's then dried and inserted by hand in the bottling line.

In Your Mouth

The way ZU/Zubrowka is most commonly consumed is mixed with apple juice in a drink called the Szarlotka. It tastes kinda like apple pie. It's dumb and fun and more American bars should offer it. In Poland the apple juice was pretty cruddy, and it would certainly be improved with unfiltered apple juice.

October 3, 2011
An Amusingly Disgusting Way to Drink Vodka in Sweden

While I was in Sweden with Karlsson's Gold vodka, we learned a traditional way to drink vodka. It is called Kaffegök, and it is gross.

You take a cup and put a coin in the bottom.

Then you fill it with coffee until you can't see the coin anymore.

Then you add vodka until you can see the coin again. That's how you know you have enough vodka in there.

Then you drink it. Damnnnn that's some kinda breakfast.

September 23, 2011
Karlsson’s Vodka: It’s In The Blend

Months ago I started to talk about my trip to Sweden with Karlsson's vodka. I only covered how to pick potatoes so far.

The potatoes for this vodka all come from Cape Bjare in Sweden.To get there, we drove from Copenhagen, over the relatively new bridge that connects Denmark to Sweden with Malmo on the other side, then turned North to the Cape. The town we stayed in is called Torekov.

The nearby potato farms grow little heirloom potatoes called virgin potatoes whose skin has not yet developed. For these potatoes, smaller is better, and they're served seasonally as virgin/new/fresh potatoes, which they pronounce like "freshpotatoes" so it's easy to know what they are. They are in season from May through August. I ate approximately 700 pounds of them while on the trip.

Karlsson's doesn't necessarily distill the smallest ones, but instead the larger ones that are less desirable for eating. They're still relatively tiny compared to the giant American Russets. Virgin potatoes don't have a ton of starch in them (which will be converted to sugar, which can then be distilled into vodka) but they have a lot of flavor. It takes several times more of these potatoes to make vodka it does the American kind.

In a truly unusual move for vodka, the potato farmers who contribute to the blend are all minor shareholders in Karlsson's vodka.

The Blend

In the development of the blend that would become Karlsson's Gold, they initially distilled 20 different types of potatoes. The current blend of Karlsson's Gold uses seven. At the moment Karlsson's doesn't have their own distillery but uses a few others. All of them are single column stills.

They specify the distillation parameters (there is a minimum distillation proof to be considered vodka) and then get the liquid at the end.

While most brands of vodka emphasize their distillation and filtration technology, Karlsson's focuses on the blend. They recognize that ever year's distillation is different so they worry about it afterward.

We tasted several distillations of individual varietals including Solist and Old Swedish Red (Gammel Svensk Röd). We even tried several different years of Solist potatoes (the main component in the blend) from 2004, 2005, and 2006.

These vintages tasted very different from one another, from bitter and tangy to sweet and honeyed. It's hard to say if the potatoes vary that much year-to-year, or if they were just getting better at distilling them with passing years. The Old Swedish Red potato distillate is insane- it smells like the sea and reminded me of washed potato skins.

Karlsson's is a blend of 7 potato varietals and to me tastes of chocolate, caramel, and dusty chocolate-pecan, with a scent texture (my made-up term) is the dustiness of Red Vines when you first open the package.

Making Vodka

To get from potatoes to vodka, they first mush up the potatoes. They don't even need to add water. They bring them up to 95 degrees Celsius, then add enzymes to break the starch into dextrins. It is then cooled to 65 degrees then another enzyme is added. Then they're ready for fermentation.

The yeast used to convert the fermentable sugars into alcohol is the same strain as an old yeast used for potato vodka production years ago. They maintain cool temperatures during the fermentation process, as this produces less methanol than it would otherwise.

They use the sour mash method of yeast propagation/fermentation. This is when you add a splash of yeast from the previous batch of fermentation to the next one. This ensures consistency between batches and probably saves raw materials as well. After fermentation, the mash is only about six percent alcohol.

A couple days later on a boat on a cruise around the Stockholm, we met Karlsson's Master Blender Börje Karlsson, who also developed Absolut vodka. He's kind of a big deal.

When blender Karlsson created Absolut, it was developed as an export product only, to get around Sweden's ban against producing vodka from anything but potatoes. It's funny that he's now bucking the trend; making potato vodka despite the trend in the other direction.

(Karlsson's served with crushed black pepper)

For a technically flavorless vodka, Karlsson's has a ton of flavor. I had some last night in a 2:1 Martini with Imbue vermouth and a dash of Angostura Orange bitters- my first vodka martini in eons.

Many vodka companies today are putting out very refined, smooth, subtle and supple products for vodka drinkers. Karlsson's is almost the opposite of that, an in-your-face, meaty vodka for people who normally dismiss the category as catering to people who don't like the taste of alcohol. There's no missing the flavor in Karlsson's.

September 22, 2011
How to Pick Potatoes

Earlier this month I visited Cape Bjare, Sweden to learn about Karlsson's Vodka. Karlsson's is made from a blend of seven heiroom "virgin new" potatoes. This means that the skin hasn't fully developed into the brown stuff we recognize here in the States.

In Sweden, restaurants serve these little tiny potatoes as a delicacy (I ate my weight in them while I was there) and Karlsson's uses the slightly larger ones to make their vodka.

But they wouldn't let us drink it until we helped make it, so off we were to the fields to pick potatoes.

Potatoes grow in clumps, and are planted in raised mounds of dirt for easier harvest. Virgin potatoes must be harvested when the plants are still flowering. The harvest is done mostly mechanically, but hand-sorting is required.

We piled into potato trucks and took on the task of sorting potatoes. The machine pulls up the clumps of potatoes, chops off the vegetation, and puts all the round things onto a conveyer belt. Our job was to pull out the undesirable round things: rocks and potatoes with brown skin.

After our job was done, the potatoes were off to the cleaning plant. They are washed and buffed and sorted according to size.

And in the case of Karlsson's, they're fermented and distilled and blended. More on that part later.

For a live action shot of potato sorting in the truck, watch the video below.

June 30, 2011