In solidarity with the people of Ukraine, all the Russian vodka is off the shelves of my favorite liquor store.
Maybe that's an admirable gesture, but it seems unlikely to impose a hardship on most vodka drinkers. Russian vodka accounts for only about 7% of the market, and a lot of what you might think of as Russian really isn't.
Smirnoff, for instance, is an American brand. The only connection it has to the old country is that its name alludes to a Moscow distillery opened in 1864 by P.A. Smirnoff. But after the Russian Revolution, P.A.'s son Vlad fled the country and started up a distillery in France. Operations are now based in Illinois and Smirnoff is actually owned by British spirits conglomerate Diageo.
Stoli, which has been pulled from some shelves and poured down the drain in protest in some localities, but not at my local store, isn't Russian either, though it started out in Russia around the turn of the 20th century.
There's some confusing history here too. Stoli used to be known as Stolichnaya then, a brand that is still manufactured and distributed by the state-owned Soyuzplodoimport (the name literally translates to "union-fruit-import"). Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, the company remains state-owned.
But then in 1997, the president of Soyuzplodoimport, Yuri Shefler, a billionaire with Russian, British and Israeli citizenship, decided to form a private company based in Luxembourg and called "Soyuzplodimport," which is exactly the same as the state-owned company except for dropping the extra "o." Confusing? This is how we do business in Russia, comrade.
In fact, Soyuzplodimport was so close to Soyuzplodoimport that people began calling the former the SPI group. And Shefler, as head of SPI, paid Soyuzplodoimport, the company of which he was president, some $300,000 for 43 Russian vodka brands, including the Stolichnaya and Moskovskaya trademarks. This was a sweet deal, as the Russian "Audit Commission" reckoned that these brands were worth in excess of $400 million. (Disinterested analysts put their worth closer to $1.4 billion.)
MOVED TO LATVIA
So Russia declared that sale illegal in 2001. But Shefler moved his operations to Latvia and SPI went right on selling a vodka they called Stolichnaya. So did Soyuzplodoimport. (The legal battle, being fought country by country, continues to this day.)
Then, earlier this year, after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, SPI rebranded its flagship vodka as Stoli as a "direct response to Russia's invasion" and ceased using any Russian ingredients in its production. So Stoli is a Latvian product, and Latvia is a member of NATO, opposed to Russian aggression.
So Stoli is OK, while if you run across a bottle labeled Stolichnaya there's at least a chance you have a real Russian vodka. (Other actual Russian vodkas include Russian Standard, Beluga Noble, Husky Vodka, Jewel of Russia, Polugar, Ustianochka, and Zyr.)
While most vodka drinkers I know seem to equate neutrality with equality — France's super premium Grey Goose, which tastes like a pale ghost's whisper, is the epitome of this sort of vodka — there are those who insist that Russian vodka sets the standard for the world. And maybe so, for there is an unmistakable robustness to Russian vodka, a bigness sometimes compounded by notes of pepper and wild herbs. It's best drunk freezer-cold — back in the days when I used to mess around with vodka, we always kept a bottle of the now-discontinued Stolichnaya Cristall in the back behind the ice trays.
On the other hand, I once spent a grueling 18 hours debriefing a Russian man, son of the famous defector Viktor Kravchenko, immediately after he'd been released from a Soviet prison and spirited to the U.S. I remember he was disappointed that we'd bought Russian vodka to celebrate his release. He said he preferred Polish vodka and settled for Jack Daniels on the rocks.
Turns out, I prefer most Polish vodkas to Russian ones as well. I like the earthiness, the grit, the terroir of the potato patches.
NOT COMPLICATED
Vodka isn't a terribly complicated spirit — you can make it out of just about anything.
We make it out of wheat, rye and corn. We make it out of potatoes and sugar beets. Cabbage. Oil-refining products (true — prison vodka). Remaindered copies of Blake Bailey's Philip Roth biography. (Also true.) In a pinch you can make it with sugar and yeast.
Vodka is basically distilled water with ethanol, which some people argue has no taste at all. (Others say ethanol tastes bitter and/or slightly pungent; no one is wrong, our taste buds are calibrated differently.) Generally, the more expensive it is, the less taste a vodka possesses.
My theory is that vodka is the most popular spirit in America because you can infuse it with anything from raspberry to bacon. (I've had chocolate-infused vodkas.) Some people like vodka because it goes well with lemonade and black coffee. We used to dose our Slurpees with it before high school homeroom (not recommended). In many ways, vodka is the perfect potion for people who like to get buzzed but don't like to drink.
And because you can make vodka from virtually anything, it stands to reason you can make it almost anywhere. Poland. Russia. Ukraine. Texas. Behind the commode in Timmy the Punk's cell. Even Arkansas.
We don't drink as much vodka as we used to, but we generally keep a bottle of Rock Town's popularly priced product around. And a few weeks ago, at the Second Friday Art Night at Historic Arkansas Museum in downtown Little Rock, we sampled some vodka made from sweet potatoes from Helena's Delta Dirt Distillery.
Our columnist Rex Nelson has, on at least a couple of occasions, written about how Harvey Williams, a third-generation Black farmer, and his wife, Donna, got the idea to produce high-quality spirits from the sweet potatoes growing on his family farm near Rondo.
THEY MOVED BACK
Harvey had graduated from the University of Arkansas, and he and Donna moved around the country in food-industry jobs. In 2016, they moved back to Arkansas, and over the next couple of years researched and developed plans for a distillery that would make use of the crop on hand. Williams' son Thomas was sent away to school to return as the head distiller. After a year or so of steady sales, Delta Dirt has expanded into gin distillation; bourbon will come later.
The Williamses weren't the first to produce vodka made from sweet potatoes — I remember hearing about a California-based distillery that was making a sweet potato-based vodka about a decade ago, and a quick internet search turns up several other examples — but Delta Dirt's is the first I've actually tried.
I like it. The sweet potato flavor, which really manifests as a sweet potato flavor (like a refined version of one of Say Macintosh's famous pies), gives it a round heartiness that distinguishes it from the slighter super premiums.
It doesn't have the filthy wang (which, depending on your expectations, isn't necessarily bad) of a raw and chewy Polish potato vodka. There's a distinct character, a smoothness edging up on silkiness. Unlike some vodkas, Delta Dirt can be said to have an actual nose.
And while there's an unmistakable touch of sweetness, the vodka isn't cloying. It's a good martini vodka, which means you can enjoy it straight and cold. And if you can do that, you can mix it with anything.
LOW IN SUGAR
As I understand it, sweet potatoes are relatively low in sugar and starch and require more time and energy to break down than regular potatoes. It takes nearly twice the amount of sweet potatoes to make an equivalent amount of alcohol as regular potatoes, and takes longer to do so. But the Williamses have access to plenty of sweet potatoes, which keeps the price of production low, allowing them to price the vodka at $30.
The most important feature of any alcoholic potable is the story that the brand can tell. Delta Dirt's story is authentic, that of a striving Black family in one of the poorest parts of America building a grassroots business that relies on locally sourced ingredients.
So the boycott of Russian vodka shouldn't bother you at all.
Email: pmartin@adgnewsroom.com