The Vodka Terroir

Great’ vodka has long been defined as a drink prized for its total neutrality. Yet in recent years, brands have been making a push to offer characterful liquids, offering botanicals or an authentic taste of their raw ingredients. Now as locality, the sourcing of ingredients, and the details of the raw materials matter to consumers more than ever before, a wave of brands are focused on offering products marketed on their terroir. But for vodka, is that really a thing?

Well, this is an about turn. If you’ve followed the lifecycle – the great highs, and the deep lows – of the vodka category you’ll know how at its peak in the 1990s, it wasn’t the craft, the origins nor the taste that excited consumers and marketeers alike. No, it was the total lack of it.

Vodka was prized and praised for tasting of nothing at all. Until it wasn’t. Following a flavour boom where among the raspberry, peach, and vanillas, we saw everything from olive to birthday cake flavours launch, and the category had exhausted itself, starting a long period of sales decline.

But now, something interesting is a foot. Over the past five or so years, many makers have been trying to boost the category and reverse its fortunes, by taking the opposite approach, taking it from something designed for mixing to something to sip.

Character is king

For a raft of makers, vodka has become all about character, while explaining its raw ingredients has become a key part of marketing. From those distilled from milk whey, to those crafted from sweet potatoes or quinoa, the sourcing has become just as important as the ingredients themselves. Just look at brands such as Black Cow (distilled from the milk by products of cheese production), to Fair’s Quinoa (made from organic, fair trade quinoa), and Hangar One Fog Point Vodka (made from captured San Francisco fog), which all use their raw ingredients – and the character they impart – as their core identity.

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