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Vodka Tasting at Entourage - Bloomington IL - Feb 19

2009 All-Stars of Liquor; The Year in Review

With the year coming to a close and everyone begins offering lists of various kinds for the year, we ask ourselves: what were the best spirits in 2009? Ultimately the consumer and the marketplace will decide. But if you want to elect an all-star group of classic spirits from the scores and ratings of 2009, then that elite group of "professionals" elected the following group of spirits...

Vodka

Vodka ratings are notoriously volatile. Winners in one year plummet the next, upstart vodkas come and go, and craft-distillers everywhere are kicking out all manner of organics, featuring different kinds of waters, different sorts of bases (we added a vodka that used a milk base, of all things, and got very good ratings), and certainly many highly imaginative marketing ploys (highlighted by the popularity of Crystal Head Vodka with a skull-shaped bottle). Vodkas remain a bulwark of popularity in the modern cocktail age due to their versatility in accepting other flavors—-be it lemon-grass or acai berries or bacon fat--vodka takes it all and provide the foundation for experimentation in drinks.

Dry Fly Vodka: Winner of the 2009 San Francisco World Spirits Competition for Best Vodka. It’s a wheat-based vodka from a craft-distiller out of Spokane, Washington. Hard to find, perhaps, but apparently worth it.

Stolichnaya Elit Vodka: Highest-scoring neutral vodka in 2009 from the Beverage Testing Institute. This is another wheat-based vodka and made from one of the most storied vodkas in the world. The “elit” comes from a special sub-zero filtering process and separates it from the already respectable, popular, (and less-expensive) red-label Stolichnaya.

8-Way Tie: Wine Enthusiasts did not award any neutral vodkas with their highest, 96-100pt “Superlative” rating in 2009. But eight different vodkas did achieve a 90-95pt score of “Superb/Highly Recommended,” including, Cape North Vodka, a wheat-based spirit out of France; Crop Organic Vodka, a grain vodka from New York; Diamond Standard Vodka, a rye-based vodka from Poland; Double Cross Vodka, a wheat-based vodka from Slovakia; Purus Organic Vodka, a wheat-based spirit from Italy; Rehorst Vodka, a craft-distilled wheat-based vodka from Wisconsin; Stolichanaya (Red Label), the famous wheat-based vodka from Russia; and True North Vodka, one of our personal favorites in a rye-based vodka from Michigan.

Gin

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St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur