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STRAIGHT, NO CHASER

The true story of how an odourless, colourless, flavourless booze became the artisanal spirit of hipsters everywhere.

Text: KEVIN BROOKER

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From our parents’ first timid forays into Screwdrivers and Harvey wallbangers, vodka has climbed steadily to a central yet unsung position in the nation’s rumpus room bar. As something for the flavour-intolerant to build a cocktail around or as a handy vector for Clamato and Tabasco, vodka is poised to surpass rye whisky at the top of our spirit charts – roughly a litre and a half annually per capita. It’s contesting the top spot around the world, and became America’s number one spirit in 1974.

Canadian vodkas have done this despite their grimly stolid image, often saddled by mundane monikers like Schenley’s and Potter’s or by faux-Cossack banners such as Marushka or Troika. It says a lot that a leading Canadian brand is Silent Sam, a reminder of vodka’s role in covert mood enhancement. Hardly mythic stuff.

Meanwhile, thanks to the 1990s cocktail renaissance – the sudden urge of 30-year-olds to dress up like their parents, toss on a Sinatra platter and get half-squiffy while brandishing stylish stemware – vodkas from many nations have gained cachet to rival that of single malt scotches. In frosted high-art bottles, they now occupy what liquor marketers like to call the ultrapremium category, based on the debatable premise that one vodka can be worth two or three times more than another.

It began when the fall of the Iron Curtain encouraged entrepreneurs to pour forth exotic brands like Chopin and Belvedere from Poland, Cristall and Kremlyovskaya from Russia. (Vodka is, after all, a Russian word for "the little water.") Later, Ketel One from Holland and France’s Grey Goose joined the $40-a-crock fray. Amid this free-for-all, two Canadian-made vodkas have staked their claim.

One is Pearl, trumpeting the pristine virtues of its provenance in the shadow of the Canadian Rockies. The other is Canadian Iceberg, which uses water melted from North Atlantic ice floes that have been in cold storage for thousands of years. Both are exemplary products, and both have achieved stellar results in international tasting competitions. But each is charting a different path toward transforming something that is tasteless, colourless and odourless into profits that are limitless.

Only a fool would attempt an assault on the celestial ranks of the vodka market without first studying its greatest latter-day success story: Absolut Vodka. Whereas vodka making is the distillation of the art of distilling – pure beverage alcohol diluted by the purest water – Absolut Vodka also happens to be the distillation of the art of marketing.

True, Sweden had a deep tradition of vodka. By 1750, it was estimated that the country contained one still for every 10 inhabitants. In 1879, Lars Olsson Smith, Sweden’s Vodka King, invented the now widespread distillation process called rectification to produce Absolut Rent Bränvin, literally "absolutely pure vodka." But it was not until 1979 that the stewards of the nation’s liquor monopoly had the idea of resuscitating the brand in order to target the vast North American market, trading effusively on Sweden’s reputation for cleanliness and modernity.

Its relaunch packaging – that instantly recognizable Futura Extra Bold Condensed logo engraved on a clear apothecary-style bottle – was the first of several genius marketing decisions. "The bottle is still the hero," notes Absolut’s president, Bengt Baron. "It has always stood for simplicity, clarity, perfection." Now a staple case study in business schools, Absolut began its ascendance with the first "Absolut Perfection" ad campaign in 1980 featuring its signature bottle, which staked out the back covers of every would-be hip periodical on the planet. Then Absolut’s U.S. distributor, Michel Roux, cajoled his friend Andy Warhol into creating an ad in his signature pop art style. Warhol, in turn, persuaded others, like the late art superstar Keith Haring, to follow suit. To date, some 400 artists have feted the brand, often for little or no pay.

Absolut thus rocketed to the number three spirit brand on earth, trailing Bacardi and Smirnoff. This year, they will ship about 7.5 million cases to 125 countries, with Canada second only to the U.S. Not bad for a company with a staff of only 350 – government employees, at that – located in a storybook village called Åhus on the Baltic coast of southern Sweden. Its profitability rivals any similar-size entity on earth.

Who wouldn’t want a tug on that bottle?

In diluting pure beverage alcohol with pure water, something else, often something ethereal, gives each vodka its unique character. Moscow distillers, for example, swear by the charcoal filtering that they invented, using only charcoal from the great Russian birch forests that imparts the clean, fiery finish beloved by the Slavic palate.

For a distiller aiming to peg a product to nature’s glory, High River, Alta., is a place as good as any. It’s drop-dead gorgeous. Snowy wedges of the Rocky Mountains lean out over its undulating wheat fields as if in permanent telephoto relief.

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