NY Times: "Vodka World Shaken, and Stirred, by Fruit Spirits

The nafka mina here is that vodka is usually kosher. Vodka made from grapes would presumably not be kosher:

Polish lore has it that vodka was distilled from coal during Communist times after efforts to use chickens backfired. In Sweden, vodka was once produced from paper-mill residue. But vodka purists of today have little patience for alternative ingredients.

“Real vodka can only be made from grain or potatoes,” says Rolands Gulbis, chairman of Latvijas Balzams, the largest vodka distiller in the Baltics, whose vodka-making tradition dates at the very least to 1900, when Czar Nicholas II of Russia built a vodka storage house here. “If vodka can be made out of grapes, then we might as well call an apple an orange and rename brandy as beer.”

But the definition of vodka is no longer as clear as the transparent spirit itself.

A vodka war has broken out in Europe. On one side are traditionalists in Poland, Finland, Sweden and the Baltic countries who argue that only spirits made exclusively from grains, potatoes and sugar-beet molasses are worthy of the name. On the other are distillers in Italy, France, Britain, and the Netherlands who are fighting for a more liberal definition. They contend that vodka’s ingredients do not affect its taste.

After all, James Bond specified that his vodka martini should be “shaken, not stirred.” He never insisted it be made from grain or potatoes.

Finland, current holder of the European Union presidency and a country where vodka has long been a tonic for chilly nights, is pressing for European Union legislation to require vodka made from nontraditional ingredients like grapes, other fruit, or even maple syrup, to say so in large bold letters on the bottle.

That would be good for kosher consumers.

But rival vodka makers, including Diageo of Britain, the world’s biggest spirit maker, owner of the popular grape-based brand Ciroc and maker of Smirnoff, say this is little more than a cynical ploy by the Nordic and Baltic countries to try to monopolize the $12 billion global vodka market. [...]

Tags: vodka, stam yeinam, grapes, mashka