Saturday Night Fever: Reyka Vodka

I have so much damned alcohol sitting around from all the goods that everyone has sent me that it looks like I'm someone who is preparing very well to be an alcoholic but wants to stock up before doing it in order to be sure that I'm doing it correctly.

Therefore, welcome to Saturday Night Fever. Every Saturday night I will be reviewing a new drink or alcoholic beverage. This makes sense because I will either be a) having enough people around to try it with me and give more opinions or b) sad that no one is around and wanting to feel superior to everyone by trying something they probably can't get.

This week: Reyka Vodka

Talk to me, Goose
Reyka Vodka is the pride of Iceland and is distilled in a Carter Head still, which probably means nothing to most of the world except it's a still designed for gins. The alcohol is then filtered through Iceland's lava rocks which removes pretty much all the impurities as it is filtered 3 times through the stuff. The water is pulled from a 4,000 year old lava field so it requires no filtering or demineralization before being blended.

Tower, this is Ghost rider requesting a flyby
The Reyka bottle is pretty cool looking. It looks like something you'd see from a bottle of spirits from the 1800's. It has a blue-tinged bottle with a ragged-edged label and the back label tells the story of the alcohol (pretty much everything I told you in the last paragraph, I'm so clever). Another thing you don't see much on a vodka bottle is that it's not a twist-cap, it's a cork.

Penny Benjamin?
Hey, the stuff looks like vodka. The interesting thing that I found is that it doesn't *smell* like vodka. It doesn't have that nose-hair burning tang that most vodkas have. It has a bit of a sweet, syrupy smell, though it's very faint.

Reyka takes it's vodka name seriously. It comes across as a very neutral spirit, which means that it's going to mix gloriously with just about anything. The taste is clean and crisp and makes for a killer, ice-cold martini. The aftertaste is short and doesn't burn, which some people miss in a vodka.

You can be my wingman anytime
The bottom line on Reyka is that it's good. Damned good. I wouldn't use it for a vodka soda, but I would definitely use it for a martini (not dry) anytime and for a drink where you want to taste the flavors of the other alcohols. It's also the perfect summer vodka as it's crisp and refreshing without feeling heavy. I'm not sure if that's ironic or not because it's a summer vodka and it comes from Iceland, I'm not too good at figuring out irony.

Reyka Vodka - US$23

Top Gun quotes from the fact that it's on right now, therefore I'm having a b) night.