All About Vodka.

Vodka is one of the most drank drinks in the world. It is a true drink of the people and of the elite. It has come from humble roots to the pinnacle of sophistication and there looks to be no stopping it. It is also the purest of all the alcohols, as not has no real distinguishable tastes.

Now if you want to start a real argument then all you have to ask is who made the first vodka. The word is a Russian word meaning "little water" But most of the early distilled spirits were attributed to be the water of life. All depending on who you are in a room with at the time would depend on who I would say made vodka first. Russia has the name but Poland looks like it has a stronger historical clam to have made it first. Also there are another load of Baltic country's that all calm the same so we will let it go and say it was from the east of Europe.

Vodka of old was not as clean tasting as it is today as it seemed that any old berry grains or other flavourings were use to add that little something to the drink . If you want to look for what vodka did once taste like you want to be drinking one of the flavoured vodkas that you can get today. In fact, it is hard to think but generally, Vodka was not much drank. That was until the late 1940 when it began its meteoric rise to be one of the most popular spirits in the world.

One of the best story's to do with Vodka is the Smirnov or Smirnoff. In 1860, a Piotr Asenieyevich Smirnove starts a distillery. He is one of the first to use a charcoal filtering process. This make a very clean and pure vodka , so good that the Smirnov factory become the purveyors of vodka to the Imperil Russian court. As you can image that was as good as it could get . Then a little thing called the Russian revolution happened and it all went a little troubled after that . The Bolsheviks' confiscate the Smirnoff factory shut it down and imprison Vladimir Sminov , Piotr third son and sentence him to death. So he escapes and ends up in Constantinople were he reopens his factory in 1920.

Soon after that, he changes the name to Smirnoff and opens another distillery in Paris. Every thing is on the up until the grate depression when Vladimir sells the company to a Rudoplh Kunett, a Russian emigrate. Who moves to the United States of America

It was the start of the cold war and the establishment that was, did not like any thing Russian. It was the witch hunting paranoid days of McCarthyism. Any thing that was not establishment such a bourbon whiskey, was embraced as a risky alternative. The fact that it looked as though it was Russian was the fact that it could be underground and cool. Well like most things that are anti establishment get a cult following and then become mainstream. And that is what happened to Vodka in the west. So with that and cult screen heroes such a James Bond drinking vodka martins shaken not stirred its legend of cool was been set .So it came to pass that Vodka beamed the cool drink of the fast living jet set and then concord the world .

Back at home where it was conceived it is still very much the drink of choice . Served ice cold and as a aperitif , digestive , with food and socially. In fact the amount of vodka drank in the eastern European counters seem extreme when you are told of the amount . But it is in the culture of the country and also I am told the best way to keep the winter out .

One thing I am told that it is very hard to get a Vodka hang over as it is so very pure . I for one do not think that as I have had one once after a friend cam home from Russia with some real Russian vodka that had a crown cork top and not a screw cap . Well once open it had to be consumed we told our selves and the rest was history . Well I think it was .