Belvedere Single Estate Vodka: bringing terroir to spirits

Perhaps one of the most common misconceptions among casual spirit drinkers is that all vodka tastes the same: bland, odourless, colourless, and good for little other than adding a bit of edge to soft drinks. The curious history of this myth is that it was devised by one of the world's best-known vodka producers as a unique selling point.

Smirnoff, in a successful attempt to launch into the US market in the early 20th Century, used the phrase “tasteless, colorless and odourless” to promote its original vodka recipe, and it stuck. To this day, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau of the US defines vodka as a spirit “without distinctive character, aroma, taste or colour.”

The reality, as Polish vodka maker Belvedere is attempting to show with its new Single Estate range, is that vodka offers a broad range of different flavours. With due care, it can be a deft, gentle and ultimately characterful drink that can be imbibed in a myriad of ways. By introducing the concept of terroir to its distillation process, Belvedere is trying to demonstrate just how differenent the spirit can be.

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Terroir - a well-known concept in the world of wine - is a term that describes the individual natural environmental conditions in which plants grow, taking into account subtle differences in soil, topography, and climate. As such, drinks created with an identical process can take on flavour characteristics unique to the environment in which they were created.

Belvedere enlisted the help of researchers at the University of Lodz to create the Single Estate range - two vodkas created the same way but vastly different flavour profiles.

To create the two vodkas, Single Estate Smogory Forest and Single Estate Lake Bartezek, Belvedere uses the same rye, but grown at different locations in Poland.

The first, Smogory Forest, uses rye from farms near the German border, while Lake Bartezek, uses rye grown 350km away in northeastern Poland - a region that experiences long, harsh winters that bury the rye in deep snow for months at a time.

The two ryes are then subjected to identical distillation processes at the Polmos Zyrardow distillery. And the difference is startling.

Smogory Forest has a robust, complex palate that includes hints of pepper and an almost earthy caramel flavour, complimented by a sweet smokiness that lingers after drinking. The punchier of the two vodkas, it also brings with it a hint of sea air on the nose.

Lake Bartezek, on the other hand, has a smoother, wider mouthfeel with a much lighter flavour profile, hinting at freshly cut grass on the nose and a clean, minty crispness on the tongue.

More subtle than its sister vodka, Lake Bartezek benefits from being served at room temperature to enrich its innate freshness, while the Smogory Forest is better over a single cube of ice.

Whether or not the concept of terroir will take off with vodka drinkers has yet to be seen, but for anyone interested in how different ingredients contribute to the flavour of vodka, Smogory Forest and Lake Bartezek offer a fascinating glimpse into what is possible.

Belvedere's single estate vodkas retail for £49. Smogory Forest is available here, while Lake Bartezek is here