Matus - Vodka : how a colorless, odorless, flavorless spirit conquered America

How a Colorless, Odorless, Flavorless Spirit Conquered America

Victorino Matus

Lyons Press

Guilford, Connecticut

An imprint of Globe Pequot Press

Copyright 2014 by Victorino Matus

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, PO Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

Lyons Press is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.

Absolut vodka, Absolut country of Sweden vodka & logo, Absolut, Absolut bottle design, and Absolut calligraphy are trademarks owned by the Absolut Company AB.

Frontispiece: Licensed by Shutterstock.com

Text design: Sheryl P. Kober

Layout: Kirsten Livingston

Project editor: Julie Marsh

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Matus, Victorino.

Vodka : how a colorless, odorless, flavorless spirit conquered America

/ Victorino Matus. First edition.

pages cm

Summary: How risk-taking entrepreneurs defied the odds and turned

medieval medicine into a multibillion-dollar industry Provided by

publisher.

eISBN 978-1-4930-1262-6 (ePub)

1. VodkaUnited States. 2. DistilleriesUnited States. 3.

Distilling industriesUnited States. I. Title.

TP607.V6M37 2014

338.4'76635dc23

2014015139

To Kate

After the first glass of vodka

you can accept just about anything

of life even your own mysteriousness

Frank OHara, As Planned

Contents

Introduction

I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade... and try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka and have a party.

Ron White

In the early morning hours of August 9, 2006, Maurice Clarett, a former Ohio State tailback, led police on a ten-minute car chase through Columbus, Ohio. Clarett had run over a spike strip, and his Hyundai Santa Fe hobbled into a restaurant parking lot where authorities surrounded him.

He was in the vicinity of a key witness scheduled to testify against him in an armed robbery trial. Officials suspected that he was trying to stop that from happening. Clarett screamed obscenities and resisted arrest. Officers fired tasers, but to no avail. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. They resorted to pepper spray, which worked, and then hauled him to jail.

According to the impound slip, Claretts SUV contained an arsenal of three handguns and an AK-47 assault rifle. Also found in the vehicle were a box of Trojan condoms, $761 in cash, a diploma, two teddy bears, and an empty bottle of vodka. In a photo that went viral, you can see the unmistakable long neck and frosted glass bottle of Grey Goose resting on the passenger seat next to one of the handguns and the rifle. Clarett subsequently pleaded guilty to a variety of charges and was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. Released on good behavior in 2010, Clarett now plays rugby and writes a blog.

What more do you need? The interior of Maurice Claretts SUV: Note the bottle of Grey Goose Vodka next to the AK-47. Courtesy of the Columbus Division of Police

In the early morning hours of February 18, 2012, a fistfight erupted inside the Double Seven nightclub in New York Citys posh Meatpacking District. A group of mostly twentysomething socialites allegedly accosted a VIP table, insulting the women, who happened to be models, and helped themselves to their $450 table-service bottle of Grey Goose. At that point Adam Hock, one of the VIPs, took action. (Hock, a physically imposing figure, insists the boys started the fight.)

But Hock didnt know whom he was fighting: Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, son of fashion designer and former editor in chief of Vogue Paris Carine Roitfeld; Stavros Niarchos, grandson of a Greek shipping magnate and one of Paris Hiltons ex-boyfriends; real estate investor Diego Marroquin; and finally, the fellow Hock knocked out cold: twenty-four-year-old Pierre Casiraghi, prince of Monaco and grandson of Grace Kelly.

Pierres face looked broken, said one witness.

Hock admitted to disorderly conduct, avoiding jail time. Not that it was a one-sided affair: One of the princes entourage tried hitting Hock over the head with a bottle of Grey Goose.

If were not drinking vodka, were taking it on a wild goose chase, so to speak, or using it as a club in a club. Whatever the method, we cannot get enough of it. Americans drink more vodka than any other spirit. It makes up 32 percent of the market; thats essentially one of every three cocktails, totaling more than $5 billion in supplier revenue.

According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, Americans purchased more than sixty-five million cases of vodka in 2012, almost 155 million gallons of a liquid defined by the federal government as without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color. Yet over a thousand brands battle for market share. In 2012 alone, 171 new brands (and 122 flavors) came onto the market. Thats one new vodka every two or three days. How did it come to this?

In the summer of 2011, I wrote a feature for the Weekly Standard, Vodka Nation, with the aim of sorting this all out. But the deeper I delved, the more convoluted the industry appeared.

If vodka is flavorless, odorless, colorless, and without character, how can one brand distinguish itself from the rest? Can a vodka tout its purity and at the same time deliver a flavor, thereby creating a distinction? In the most narrow terms, the answer is yes. Aside from determining the vodkas basecorn, potatoes, grain, wheat, grapes, or beet sugar, which subtly affect taste and texturethe Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau allows for the addition of sugar, provided the sugar does not exceed two-tenths of 1 percent, and citric acid, so long as it is only added in a trace amount not to exceed 1,000 parts per million.

Thats what it comes down to in this multibillion-dollar industry: parts per million. Well, that and marketing. For instance, can a top-shelf vodka achieve high volume? Can it claim elite status yet be consumed by millions? It seems contradictory, but Grey Goose fits the bill, all thanks to marketing.

The strange thing about vodkas dominance is how it transpired so suddenly. For two centuries America drank brown spiritsfrom the colonial rum trade and the Whiskey Rebellion to the Bourbon Trail and Prohibition. But in 1934, just after Prohibition ended, the first vodka distillery in America opened in Bethel, Connecticut... and then almost closed down for lack of interest.

Yet by 1967 vodka overtook gin as the countrys top clear spirit. (It helped that it was harder to detect on the breath.) Soon people were ordering vodka martinis, shaken, not stirred. In 1976, the bicentennial, vodka officially beat out whiskey, bourbon, and rum as the nations favorite spirit. At the time, we drank mostly American vodkas, and, with the exception of Smirnoff, none of it was any good. But then came an absolutely ingenious bottle from Sweden, and everything changed.