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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
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Editor’s Note: It was October 4 and I was planning to discuss vodka in the radio segment I do every Friday (at 4:35 on The Dave Glover Show on 97.1 FM) for two reasons: one, it happened to be National Vodka Day and, two, the Cardinals had lost miserably that day to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the NLDS. To both celebrate and drown sorrows, I asked Dustin Parres (left), bar manager at SubZero Vodka Bar and Gamlin’s Whisky House a little about vodka, and for a cocktail recipe using Cardinal Sin, a local distill and one appropriate for the day (and unfortunately, for today as well). Parres filled an email with all kinds of interesting factoids I didn’t know, the contents of which follow. Editorial comments are in brackets:
The Home Grown Sin
1.5 oz Cardinal Sin Vodka 1 oz housemade cucumber syrup .5 oz Velvet Falernum 1.5 oz tonic Garnished with cucumber and lime
The cucumbers were grown on Moon Dance Farms, our family farm, which sources local grass fed organic beef to Sub Zero, and is also home to my “cocktail garden” which is moving into a greenhouse for the first time to allow for year-round production. As bar manager [at SubZero], I prefer to use local organic produce whenever possible.
SubZero just celebrated its 9-year anniversary. When we opened our doors we carried 97 vodkas, today there are 647. Vodka has been the largest and fastest growing spirit category of the last decade, and we are proud to house the largest selection in the country right here in St. Louis. I counted them Tuesday, as I do every Tuesday. We store all the bottles at 0 degrees, which doesn’t make counting them any easier.
Its versatility is what makes it appealing to almost every consumer. It can be distilled from almost any organic material. I have vodkas distilled from anything including Potato, Rye, Pineapple, and even Grass. The most popular distillate though is still Wheat.
Most distillers switched to wheat in 80's because it takes 10 pounds of potato to make a liter of vodka, and only a handful of wheat to produce a gallon of vodka. So economics has made wheat the popular choice.
Old school vodka drinkers still enjoy potato vodkas, like Chopin and Viking Fjord because of the viscosity and gentle mouth feel created by the high starch in potato, while newer vodka fans prefer the crisp clean finish of a wheat-based vodka. I like the dry spiciness of a rye vodka myself.
Rye is considered in many circles to be the superior distillate because it produces high vodka yields like wheat, but also has a low “fusel” content. Fusel alcohols are the undesirable, off-flavored alcohols found in other distillates—alcohols that should be filtered out, as their impurities are thought to be the cause of hangovers. The low fusel content of rye therefore makes it desirable to both distillers and consumers. However, an acre of wheat produces 10 bushels of wheat while an acre of rye produces only 3 bushels, so wheat remains the most economical choice for producing vodka.
Cardinal Sin (right)is actually distilled from a combination of three grains: wheat, oats, and barley, producing a unique, clean flavor in your glass. It is then filtered through a couple different mediums including charcoal (very common) and coconut husks (uncommon). As vodka drips through a filter it has a tendency to take the same path through the medium and only come in contact with about half the filtering material. Cardinal Sin vibrates their filters, changing the course of the vodka, causing more interaction with the filtering material, more effective filtration, and a cleaner, smoother vodka.
[Supplemental information]
Gamlin’s Whiskey House, which will [and did] open on October 21st, will have 270 whiskies on opening day, 160 of which will be bourbons. [SLM's Q&A with owners Lucas and Derek Gamlin is here.]
We are also opening a bar called Taha’a Twisted Tiki in the Grove and plan to open our doors in mid- to late November with a library of over 100 rums.
