By
George Brozowski
Can
anyone really distill a great bottle (750 ml) of
vodka and then sell it for only $17.00? When super-premium
vodkas sell well north of $35.00 per 750 ml bottle, how can
these guys really make a vodka that can stand up to and maybe
even surpass those super-premium vodkas in taste for half
the price? We'll dive into those questions and hopefully provide
you with the answers shortly.
There's
a whole lot of distilling going on in Austin, Texas these
days, and Deep Eddy is part of that emerging
spritely spirits scene. They use a column still to produce
their vodka, which essentially creates a spirit that has been
effectively distilled 10 times. They use some of Mother Nature's
finest water pulled up from an aquifer deep beneath the earth,
and then they charcoal filter the final product 6 times. That's
some pretty neat stuff to do to good old corn, so I guess
the proof will be in the tasting.
© Jenny DeMarco Photography www.jennydemarco.com
Of
course, just making straight up vodka wasn't quite enough
for these good old boys, so they upped the ante with sweet
tea, cranberry, ruby red grapefruit and lemon flavored vodka.
I have to admit here that well over half the flavored vodkas
I have tasted just weren't worth drinking, but ever the optimist,
I have high hopes for Deep Eddy. Let's get
to it and see where it goes.
These
spirits comes in a clear bottle with essentially the same
logo but in different colors, depending on the flavor of vodka.
So let's begin with the straight up un-flavored vodka. The
nose is sweet and minty with a hint of corn lurking in the
background, accompanied by a bit of a mineral aroma. On the
palate, I get a little spice up front but really not that
much. It is very clean and quite smooth and sweet, surprisingly
so for a vodka that only costs $17.00. The finish is also
smooth and clean and dry and lasts a medium amount of time.
This is a surprisingly pleasant vodka that easily holds its
own with vodkas costing two or three times as much and hailing
from far more exotic places than Austin, Texas. I highly recommend
this vodka; as a matter of fact, I would favorably compare
it to a very expensive vodka made from grapes that up until
now was my favorite.
Ok,
that being said let's give the Sweet Tea
flavored Deep Eddy Vodka a try. The nose
is the very essence of brewed tea with none of the ethanol
vapors usually associated with vodka. If I didn't know better,
I would say I was smelling straight up tea. It has an earthy
toffee kind of aroma without the sweetness I was expecting.
On the palate, I get the tea flavor immediately, followed
by an earthy almost molasses like taste. This vodka is sweet
but not sweet enough to be distracting. The finish is of earthy
and mineral like, followed by the molasses and sweetness and
finally a last hint of tea flavor. The finish lasts a short
time but coats the mouth with a pleasant and smooth taste.
This flavored vodka, just like all their other flavored vodkas,
weighs in at 35% ABV versus the straight unflavored vodka
that weighs in at 40% ABV.
Next
up is the Cranberry flavored Deep
Eddy Vodka. The nose is very much cranberry like
but a sweet cranberry, not a tart cranberry like your mother
would serve at Thanksgiving dinner. Again there are no ethanol
vapors to get in the way. Oh WOW, on the palate, the first
and foremost flavor is sugar, lots of sugar that almost immediately
gives way to some sort of aspartame sweet like tartness that
was missing from the nose. The cranberry flavor is faint and
struggling to overcome the sweetness and tartness that seem
to be fighting each other for control of my taste buds. It's
almost like a hard candy in the flavors that it delivers.
The finish is candy sweet with barely a trace of the tartness
and lasts a short time but definitely makes you feel like
you've been sucking on a hard candy for a while.
Deep
Eddy's Lemon Vodka is up next. The nose has some
kind of a lemon like aroma to it that reminds me of a lemon
infused car wax for some reason, if there was even such a
thing to compare it to. It's not really sweet but just some
kind of off tart aroma, like no citrus I have ever smelled.
However, on the bright side, it smells smooth and again has
almost no alcohol in the nose. On the palate, the immediate
rush seems to come from something lemony sweet immediately
followed by something very tart. This is very reminiscent
of some moonshine's I've tasted without the sweet and tart
extremes. My palate just doesn't know how to react to this
vodka. Somewhere between the sweetness and the tartness there's
something very interesting here, but I just can't figure it
out. The finish is medium long and again leaves a hard candy
aftertaste rather than a vodka aftertaste.
OK,
I have saved the Ruby Red Grapefruit flavored
vodka for last because, I have to admit, I don't really get
grapefruit at all. And by that I mean real grapefruit - what's
up with that fruit? It's tart, acidic, and needs lots of sugar
to make it palatable but somehow enough people either like
it or put up with it to make it marketable. I simply can't
imagine what these guys were smoking when they came up with
this flavored vodka, but giving them the benefit of the doubt,
let's get into it. The nose is muddled unlike the previous
flavored Deep Eddy vodkas that seemed to
be purpose driven; this one just seems unsure which direction
it wants to take. It has some of those earthy tones but they
are unclearly defined. I get some kind of nod toward grapefruity
aromas, but they just don't work for me. There's a citrusy
note, no sweetness and of course no alcohol in the nose, but
based on the nose, I am ambivalent about putting this in my
mouth. It's sort of like being a five year old that just playfully
tortured and murdered his first bug and now doesn't know if
he really wants to put it in his mouth and try it anymore
after all that. Unlike that kid, I did put this grapefruit
flavored vodka in my mouth. On the palate, there's an earthy
taste of citrus tartness, followed by some sweetness with
absolutely no tell tale hints of alcohol. The finish is, of
course, smooth but again leaves a hard candy like after taste
that reflects that sweet tartness and lasts a good long time.
I have to apologize for this review because getting me to
like anything about grapefruits would have been nearly impossible
and yet this vodka took a reasonable stab at it. If you really
must consume grapefruit flavored anything, much less vodka,
get yourself a grapefruit, cut it accordingly, and pour some
Deep Eddy straight vodka over it. Then, sprinkle a little
bit of sugar over that and get your day started. By the way,
I might recommend a cup of coffee to go with this breakfast
of champions.
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more Rants & Raves click
here.
www.deepeddyvodka.com