–Russian saying (cribbed from the BBC's fascinating h2g2 website)

 

I've got a little bottle of vodka on my desk, a half-pint bottle – oh, God help me, yes, it's a 200-milliliter bottle. Are you metric tight asses happy now? Anyway, it's a hip-pocket bottle of Tito's Handmade Vodka that I got from Tito Beveridge himself when he was here in my little corner of Pennsylvania. We hung out and had a couple beers (Yards ESA, which Tito really liked: smart guy) while I asked him about his booze.

 

"I really started distilling to meet chicks," he said.

 

And when we parted ways, he gave me this little bottle for sampling.

 

I sampled enough to write about it, and I keep the rest close to hand, right beside the phone. Every now and then, I open it up and just smell it ... like that, and revel a little in that crisp shot of something that is supposed to be odorless, tasteless and colorless – by federal law! – but isn't.

 

But I'm a beer-and-whiskey guy, right? Vodka is supposed to be something I make fun of: water with fuel and a big waste of money if you're paying more than $10 for a 750-milliliter bottle (damn metric system's everywhere!). And I've done that.

 

Before I was a beer-and-whiskey guy, though, I was a vodka man. I drank a lot of Popov in college – so much that I used to buy it by the case, across the border in Maryland, to save money. That was when I was just slopping it down with apple juice, orange soda and the packaged iced tea the local dairy sold. We even figured out how to crack open the soda canisters on our frat-house soda dispenser (we were a full-service frat with hot-and-cold running drinks) and pour in a few gallons of apple cider and two 1.75 liter bottles (don't ... even say it) of Popov. That was a hell of a good drink.

 

Then my buddy Wayne bought me a bottle of Stoli, and I realized that there could be a difference in vodkas: the Stoli was not as crisp as the Popov, but it didn't have as much solvent flavor, either. When his 21st birthday came up a few months later, I gave him a bottle of Stoli I'd frozen inside a foot-thick block of ice. We chipped away around the neck, poured it block and all, and it was like syrup, water-clear, glug-glug-thick, head-fuel syrup. Three of us drank the whole bottle.

 

Shortly after that, my college roommate started dating a girl who had a Russian friend, and we wound up having a vodka party in our room with five different vodkas, thimble glasses, blinis with sour cream and fish eggs (not caviar, fish eggs – I think my roommate got 'em at a baitshop) and all kinds of little zakuski, or vodka snacks: pickles, crackers, salted herring, anything salty or briny. I have a clear memory of clinking glasses of ice-cold Smirnoff 100 proof with Devorah – the Russian girl – and knocking back the half-ounce quickies as loud balalaika music played. My roommate was pretty boho at times, and had all kinds of weird props for parties.

 

It was good. I learned that really good vodka could be the center of a ritual, could be the center of an evening, could bring women right into my room – and I haven't had much to do with Popov since, although I keep a bottle if someone drops by who really wants a screwdriver or a Seabreeze or something; it's perfectly good for mixing. But if someone wants to drink thimbles, I've got the good stuff hidden in the freezer ... which is camouflaged. (Really, it is; I have to keep the kids from eating all the black raspberry ice cream I keep for beer floats. More on beer floats later.)

 

Getting a taste for expensive vodka probably saved me from becoming a total boozer, but it also gave me something to cherish and hone: an aptitude for sipping straight liquor and savoring the bite and burn. Good vodka has a bite – an edgy quality that seems to dance right on the verge of fingernail polish and drain cleaner, that eye-opening "zing!" that wrinkles the skin in your nose and makes you realize that this stuff is gonna clean the crap out of your pipes and let you live forever – at least for a while, just today.

 

Do yourself and myself a favor, then. If you like vodka drinks with lots of juice or soda or stuff in them, by all means, get yourself a big bottle of Smirnoff (cuz it looks better on your shelf than Popov – if you don't care, save the money) for mixing. But keep something rocking in the freezer, and get some little thimble glasses for the syrupy head-fuel. And a jar of little pickles ... although there cannot be not enough snacks. There can only be not enough vodka. 

 

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