I’ve always said that the best way to make it in the spirits business is to have a great story, because people often have to make their first purchase before they actually get to sample what’s in the bottle. I’ve come across four new spirits lately that have some intriguing stories behind them, and at least three of them are pretty special in the glass as well. (I haven’t tasted the fourth one yet.)
The first spirit is a vodka — something I ordinarily don’t spend much time thinking about. By legal definition, vodkas are "neutral spirits without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color." Since the spirit is distilled almost to pure alcohol, stripping the flavor and character out of it, you can make vodka out of just about anything that contains sugar, which can be converted to alcohol through fermentation and distillation. While many people think that vodka comes from potatoes, they’re just a minor source of the sugar or starch on the global vodka scale. Much more product is made from grains like corn, wheat, rice, rye and sorghum, at facilities that also make industrial ethanol. Heck, if you’re a fan of M*A*S*H, you remember that Hawkeye Pierce made spirits in a still in “The Swamp” using animal feed.
This is all to say that it takes something really different to convince me to get especially excited about vodka. Enter Kástra Elión, a family-owned distillery in Greece that distills vodka using hand-picked olives from the Nafpaktos region of the country. Olives? Now that’s different!
Think of making a vodka martini (which I reject as being a thing — call it a “kangaroo” to be more accurate) using olive vodka and a garnish of olives. How meta! Plus, when Kástra Elión reached out to me, they were quite aware of Nashville’s history as the Athens of the South — and our model of the Parthenon in Centennial Park — so they had done their homework.
Color me intrigued. I said yes to trying a sample bottle. First of all, the packing is really impressive. The glass bottle looks like a white ceramic amphora, and will probably end up as a vase once I finish its contents. Immediately evocative of its Greek provenance, Kástra Elión is indeed an interesting addition to the vodka canon.
For one thing, it actually tastes like something — slightly sweet on first sip and a little buttery as part of a dry martini. (Or, ahem, a kangaroo.) While I couldn’t actually pick up any olive or brininess, I’m sure that’s because there wasn’t any brine, and the olives were distilled within an inch of total destruction to extract every bit of sugar, since they aren’t as dense in starch as other possible base ingredients.
I’m normally not a big fan of martinis in general, but Kástra Elión did change my mind a little bit. The languid mouthfeel was quite nice, and the spirit played nicely with a premium dry vermouth. A dash of orange bitters was another good idea they suggested. While it’s not cheap at an MSRP in the $50+ range, Kástra Elión is a nice premium vodka option for your home bar, as long as you don’t waste it in a screwdriver or a Bloody Mary. Plus, you get a free vase out of the deal.
The next shipment that my beleaguered FedEx guy dropped off on my front porch was a two-bottle package from Stellum Spirits, a new venture from Barrell Craft Spirits. BCS has earned a vaunted reputation for sourcing great barrels and then blending them into award-winning whiskeys. They are a fine example of the new trend where master blenders are receiving as much attention as master distillers for what they bring to the final product. You can’t blend a great whiskey without starting with a good base, but a distiller can’t do much to improve his or her product once it enters the barrel, other than overseeing the aging and blending process. That’s the point at which BCS takes the baton.
Stellum Spirits is a national brand based around elegant blends of single barrels into bourbons and ryes that are bottled at higher proofs to showcase the nuances of the process. Their new Stellum Bourbon clocks in at about 115 proof, and Stellum Rye is bottled at more than 116 proof, so they are boy-dog whiskeys for sure. The bourbon won a Gold and the rye received a Double Gold at the recent prestigious San Francisco World Spirits Competition, so I was excited to try them out.
Stellum strives to exude classic simplicity, and the no-frills wine bottle certainly reflects that. The packaging also shows off the lovely color contributed by the oak to these whiskeys, both a lovely maple syrup amber. The bourbon is a blend of three batches of Indiana whiskey, two with a high rye content in the mash bill and a third that is very high in corn. While there’s no age statement on the bottle, the whiskey within has clearly spent at least four or five years in barrel to pick up that much color and complexity. I have heard that there are some barrels in the blend that might be at least a decade old, so the master blenders are taking advantage of some premium ingredients in their final recipe.
The result is quite nice, full of baking spices and the characteristic vanilla of American whiskey. Peppery notes give way to a long honey finish which opened up nicely with a single ice cube in the glass or a splash of water in a snifter. At $55, Stellum Bourbon is solidly in the midrange of premium bourbons, and worth the price in my opinion.
Next up, I cracked the rye, and I immediately saw/tasted what all the fuss was about. Many sourced rye whiskeys come from the massive MGP distillery in Indiana, and some of them end up turning into remarkable whiskeys while others are just meh. The 95% rye content of the mash bill is a dead giveaway of an MGP product, because many smaller distilleries have difficulty working with the notoriously sticky grain in their mashing process.
Stellum Rye is indeed primarily a 95% rye from Indiana, but augmented with some barrels of small batch rye whiskeys distilled in Kentucky and Tennessee that contribute a little higher barley content to the final blend. One can only imagine the complexity of figuring out the best proportion of barrels in the final product, like baking a million-pound cake using ingredients that come in 500 lb. barrels. However difficult that would be to do, Stellum has figured it out,
Fruity on the nose with a lovely nutmeg and clove spice upon palate entry, this high-proof rye doesn’t exhibit the expected burn that you would imagine. Instead, the fruit and spice warm your body from top to bottom as a sipper, and make a fantastic base for a proper Manhattan. (Again, use good vermouth and real cherries for the maximum effect.)
I came up with a weird pairing, mainly because I was feeling a little peckish when I returned to the bottle for my second tasting session. Spying my ubiquitous carton of Whoppers on the shelf, I nibbled on a couple of malt balls while I sipped a snifter, and the fruit and spice of the rye complemented the malty chocolate remarkably. Of course, maybe I just had the munchies and this was the ideal pairing for that particular moment. I guess I’ll have to try it again sometime.
The finish of Stellum Rye exhibits a little bit of menthol and mint, so maybe when I get assaulted by my friends with Girl Scouts in the family, I may have to do a little Thin Mint experimentation. Regardless of how you drink it, at the same price as Stellum’s bourbon, this is an exceptional rye worth seeking out.
Finally, the new whiskey (two actually) that I haven’t actually sampled yet is from Grain & Barrel Spirits in Charleston, the team that resurrected the historic Chicken Cock Whiskey grand and turned it into a cult favorite a few years ago. They have partnered with Elvis Presley Enterprises to create a new line of Elvis-inspired whiskeys which will hit the market soon. Their Elvis Whiskey is a sourced Tennessee whiskey bottled at 90 proof, and their Elvis Rye is also a 90 proof spirit which they readily admit comes from MGP. They will both retail for around $50 and are available to preorder at the Elvis Whiskey website.
That’s it. That’s all I know. If you’re a big fan of The King, you’re probably gonna order a bottle or two. If not, I guess you’ll probably have “Suspicious Minds.” Either way, thankyaverymuch.
