Epcot Food & Wine 2010 – Belvedere Vodka

Who & What: BELVEDERE VODKA (Poland), presented by Donae Burston (oops, he/she wasn’t there, we had a substitute… Michael Flannery)

Our substitute presenter...

When: Friday October 15, 2010 6:00 pm

Where: Festival Center, Epcot

Tastings: Belvedere Pure (a.k.a. plain), Belvedere Pink Grapefruit, Belvedere Orange

for tasting - can you see any vodka?

that's Nora's thumb, now do you get an idea of how little was in the glasses?

What We Learned:

• Vodka in General
  • US Govt defines vodka as an alcohol made of any starch, it must be flavorless & tasteless; any inocuous alcohol
  • vodka #1 spirit in the US
  • 60 calories per 1.5 oz pour
    • one of the lowest calorie drinks you can do

    Nick did some fact-checking — 80 proof vodka, gin, rum, or whiskey has similar calories

    • 1 oz ~ 64 calories
    • 1.5 oz (one jigger or one shot) ~ 97 calories
    • if you go from 80 proof to 100 proof the calorie count increases to ~ 124

    so… vodka is not the lowest in calories and the presenter was off by about 50% on how many calories are in a shot of vodka

  • tasting vodka
    • you taste sweet on the front of your tongue & you taste alcohol with the middle of your tongue
    • you should smell spirits with your mouth slightly open (unlike wine)
• Belvedere Vodka (here and here)
  • the first premium vodka sold in the US (1994)
  • made with rye, 65% starch — germinated rye, not malted rye
  • water comes from a 30,000,000 year old artisinal well/aquafier
    • this water undergoes reverse osmosis
    • on the plant’s property and is used for all purposes, even washing new bottles
  • natural airborne yeast — common with spirits – not with sake or beer
  • their master distiller has been with the company for over 40 years
  • it takes 80 pounds of rye to create one bottle of vodka
• Belvedere Pure Vodka
  • distilled in column distillery 4 times
  • thus no flavor of it’s own!
  • this is the base vodka, the flavored vodkas use this and macerated fruit
• Flavored Belvedere Vodkas
  • start with Belvedere Pure Vodka
  • put in stainless steel tanks to move to different facility
  • add macerated fruit to create flavors
    • orange flavors come from mandarin orange, orange peel, lime peel…
    • pink grapefruit flavors come from pink grapefruit (equivalent of one per bottle of vodka), ginger, lemon…
  • another distillation is then done
  • get cloudy if you add ice – natural oils from real fruit they use
  • 20-25% of volume is put back into next batch to maintain flavor consistency
• Bartender Info
  • gin is the first flavored vodka
    • he says Bombay Sapphire Ginis less flavorful than regular Bombay Gin – took down a notch to try to mimic vodka (and get some of vodka’s marketshare)
  • agave syrup = lowest glycemic index (best to use!)
  • bartenders work with acids (fresh fruit juices) & sugars (cane sugar syrup, honey, agave syrup)
  • Moscow Mule – vodka + lime + ginger beer
  • Collins — absolute classic vodka cocktail — vodka + citrus juice + club soda
  • Dacquari — ditto for rum
  • Classic Cocktails
    • all spirit –> stirred
    • sugar or juice added to spirits –> shaken

Tasting Notes:

• Belvedere Pure Vodka
  • Nick… smells purely like alcohol & tastes harsh, no body but it is vodka
  • Nora… almost senseless / tasteless / no aroma other than ETOH
• Belvedere Pink Grapefruit
  • Nick… first taste – smells very limey & tastes like grapefruit but still “harsh”; second taste – “I could drink this with grapefruit juice but that would be a waste of a premium vodka!”
  • Nora… spicy peppery & don’t care for it on it’s own
• Belvedere Orange
  • Nick… first taste – smells like orange cleaner, not appealing and tastes like inhaling orange cleaner, not a good taste; second taste – lost harshness because the first taste was so bad, but still bad, not at all appealing
  • Nora… I’m don’t care for it on it’s own

Final Thoughts:

• the pours for these Beverage Seminars at the Festival Center are tiny and skimpy, we estimate them to be ½ oz pours – Nick tried to get a photo showing how small they are
  • the Tequila Tasting at Mexico is making these beverage seminars look bad
• 6 crackers for 4 people; 3 tastes x 4 = 12; so ½ cracker each but no plates or even napkins
• Nora says – I still prefer Stoli flavored vodkas, but after this tasting, I think I’m off vodka for a while
• the speaker was a substitute, not from Belvedere; he’s a bartender and once he started talking about that he became more enthusiastic and entertaining
  • regardless, we wouldn’t go to a seminar just to hear him speak