Rouge Vodka

Decided to (needed to) break out of the Wine World for the night….

Our uncle, the vodka drinker, was in town so we decided to have a little fun and do a vodka taste test.  The things I put my family and friends throughJ

If you drink vodka with a mixer then you probably don’t care which brand you choose.  I am a vodka martini Gal so good vodka is paramount to my experience.

I won’t “call out” the losing vodka brand names but let us just say I had a sufficient representation.

Must say it was a fun night!  But more importantly, I found my NEW FAVORITE VODKA.  Rouge Vodka was super smooth, no burn and had a great finish.  I looked it up on http://www.rougevodka.com  and found the following information:  Distilled 5 times, made from Oregon Cascade water and filtered through white rose petals (that is super cool!).  Best part is the price is in the mid $20s which is great for super premium vodka.

I found the process interesting:  They take high quality grain; ripen it in the sun till it is mature.  Once harvested the grain is broken down into a mash.  The mash is then heated to boiling and sterilized.  The fermentation process begins; changing sugar to ethyl alcohol and then the distillation process; heating the alcohol with steam to create vapors and discarding the extracted materials.  The distillation process with Rouge Vodka is completed 4 more times (hence “distilled 5 times”).  Now the cool part – the distilled liquid passes through a filter of coconut husk carbon to remove the remaining impurities.  Then, it passes through a bed of white rose petals! At this point the vapors contain around 95% to 100% alcohol so to make the vodka drinkable (40% alcohol), water is added; Rouge Vodka uses water from the Cascade Mountains of Oregon.  End result is super smooth vodka!

Give it a try and let me know what you think….