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| SPIRITS |
| Vodka |
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| Unlike brandy and whisky, there's not much mystery about |
the production of vodka. No country or region touts its superiority to the others for producing the finest vodka, although many producers have spent a lot of money trying to convince people of the contrary. Vodka can be compared to bottled waters: very few regulations or restrictions apply that help to protect the unknowing consumer. Image is everything, and brand loyalties have little to do with quality.
Due to its tasteless character, vodka can be distilled from almost anything. Grain is often used as the source of sugar for distillation but some producers use potatoes or even cane sugar in the process. Using continuous stills, pure (or raw) alcohol is extracted from a variety of mashes at proofs higher than 180. Vodka is considered a neutral spirit, this defines it as being distilled at a concentration above 90 percent. The final product has so few impurities that it's almost impossible to discern whether it was distilled from grain, rice, or corn.
United States law requires that neutral spirits go through a charcoal filtering process to remove any impurities left after distillation. Vodka producers, depending on the "quality" desired, will redistill the spirits up to three times before blending them with water and bottling them. These additional distillations do nothing to distinguish vodka from pure medicinal alcohol; only ad campaigns can do that. |
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