What is vodka? What it is made from, how it is made and the law

Vodka sold in Great Britain is defined in the retained Regulation (EC) 110/2008, Annex II, category 15. It is made from ethyl alcohol of agricultural origin, fermented with yeast from potatoes, cereals or other agricultural raw materials, then “distilled and/or rectified so that the organoleptic characteristics of the raw materials used and by-products formed in fermentation are selectively reduced”.

Put plainly, the distiller starts with a farmed crop and strips back its taste on purpose. Reduced does not mean removed. The same category allows the spirit to be redistilled or treated with activated charcoal to give it special characteristics, caps methanol at 10 grams per hectolitre of pure alcohol, and admits only the natural flavour compounds already present in the distillate. A vodka may have character, but never a predominant flavour.

The spirit it starts from has its own entry in Annex I of the same regulation, which requires ethyl alcohol of agricultural origin to reach at least 96% ABV, with no detectable taste other than that of its raw material. At that strength very little of the crop is left before anything else is done to it.

Nothing under 37.5% ABV may be sold as vodka, under paragraph (b) of category 15. Most bottles are 40%, the strength the vodka page and our recipes assume, and ABV vs proof explains why some brands bottle at exactly the floor.

Grain and potatoes are the raw materials category 15 treats as standard. Any other crop has to be named: paragraph (d) requires the words “produced from” and the raw material, so a grape vodka says produced from grapes.

According to Wikipedia’s account of the regulation, the rule was a compromise: before it took effect in 2008, the traditional vodka countries, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Sweden among them, campaigned to limit vodka to grain and potatoes after grape-based vodka had sold well in the United States, and southern European wine countries, which distil the residues of wine-making into neutral spirit, opposed them. The outcome allows any agricultural raw material and makes the label say which.

Wheat and rye are the common cereals, and Wikipedia’s article on vodka lists corn, rice and sorghum as well. Grapes and sugar beet bring sugar of their own, while grain and potatoes hold starch that has to become sugar before yeast can work on it. The crop survives in the finished spirit as texture more than taste, which is where tasting comes in.

Category 31 of the same annex is flavoured vodka, which keeps the same strength floor but, unlike plain vodka, may be sweetened and coloured and is sold under its flavour; that is how vanilla vodka reaches the shelf.

A juniper flavour moves the spirit into another category: under categories 20 to 22, gin is spirit of agricultural origin with a predominant taste of juniper, and what is gin covers its three grades. The sugar a flavoured vodka may carry, where it turns into a liqueur and how to make one at home are in flavoured vodka explained.

In the United States vodka is a type of neutral spirits under 27 CFR 5.142. That section sets neutral spirits at 95% ABV or more off the still, from any suitable material, bottled at no less than 40%, so the American floor sits above the British one. It also lets vodka be treated with up to two grams of sugar and one gram of citric acid a litre, bars ageing or storage in wood barrels, and allows charcoal filtered on the label after treatment with at least one ounce of activated carbon or charcoal per 100 wine gallons.

Until 2020 the American standard also required vodka to be “without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color”. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau dropped those words in its final rule T.D. TTB-158, published in April 2020 and in force from May. The rule records that ten of the twelve comments on vodka asked for the change, and that the bureau agreed the requirement no longer matched what drinkers expected. Under the same rule, vodka is told apart from other neutral spirits by its production standards: no ageing, and the small allowances for sugar and citric acid.

A further rule, T.D. TTB-176, in force from 11 March 2022, renumbered the regulations, which is why older sources cite 27 CFR 5.22 for the same standard. American flavoured vodka falls in a separate class, flavoured spirits, under 27 CFR 5.151, with a lower strength floor.

Neither the British text nor, since 2020, the American one asks for a tasteless spirit.

The crop is fermented first. Grain and potatoes are mashed so that their starch becomes sugar, and yeast turns that sugar into a weak alcoholic wash. Grapes and sugar beet skip the first step.

The wash is then distilled and rectified to high strength. Column stills, which run continuously, reach high strength more readily than pot stills, which work in batches and keep more of the heavy compounds of the wash. Rectification is distillation carried far enough to separate out the compounds that carry the crop’s character. Many brands do not distil at all: Wikipedia’s article notes that in the United States much vodka starts as grain spirit at about 95%, bought in bulk from a handful of large producers, which the bottler filters, dilutes and sells under its own name.

Charcoal is a choice, not a rule. British law permits treatment with activated charcoal, and American law lets a vodka treated with enough of it say so on the label. Neither treats it as a grade.

Water comes last, to bring the spirit down from distilling strength to bottling strength. At 40% ABV, more than half of what is in the bottle is that water.

According to Wikipedia’s summary of the record, the word wódka is first recorded in 1405, in court records from Sandomierz in Poland, where it meant medicines and cleansers rather than a drink. The same article reports that Genoese envoys brought aqua vitae to Moscow in 1386, and that a document of 1399 uses the term varenoe vino, distilled wine. English borrowed the word vodka from Russian, in which it is a diminutive of voda, water.

Early vodka was not the clear 40% spirit sold today, and it was first taken as medicine. Polish sources cited there describe three distillations reaching 70 to 80% ABV, then watering down to 30 to 35%. By the same account, industrial production began in Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, new technology in the second half of the nineteenth made clear vodka possible, and the first rectification distillery there opened in 1871.

Scholars still debate where vodka began, and little written evidence survives on either side.

The Moscow Mule is usually credited with selling vodka to Americans. Wikipedia’s account, drawing on a 1948 newspaper report, dates it to 1941 and to three men: John G. Martin, president of Heublein; Rudolph Kunett, who ran its Smirnoff vodka division; and Jack Morgan, whose Cock ’n’ Bull in Hollywood made a ginger beer. Vodka, ginger beer and lime gave each of them something to sell. The same article records a version published in The Wall Street Journal in 2007, which credits Wes Price, a bartender at the Cock ’n’ Bull, clearing unsold stock from the cellar.

According to the same article, Martin went from bar to bar with a Polaroid camera, leaving each bartender a photograph of themselves with a copper mug and a bottle of Smirnoff, and the copper mug has stayed with the drink. The IBA’s Moscow Mule still names Smirnoff: 45ml, with 120ml of ginger beer and 10ml of fresh lime juice in a mule cup. Ours keeps the measures and fills the mug with ice first. The same frame takes other spirits: tequila in the Mexican Mule, Irish whiskey in the Dublin Mule, and spiced rum in the Jamaican Mule and the Pack Mule.

After the Mule, vodka went where gin had been: the Vodka Martini, the Vodka Gimlet and the Vodka Sour followed the same route, and gin or vodka in the classics sets the pairs side by side. The Vesper, from Ian Fleming’s novel Casino Royale of 1953, puts one measure of vodka beside three of gin.

Later drinks were written for vodka from the start. Wikipedia’s account gives the most common claim for the Espresso Martini: Dick Bradsell, at the Soho Brasserie in London, around 1983. The same source records Gaz Regan’s account that the usual Cosmopolitan was created at the Odeon in New York in 1989. The Bloody Mary is stirred, never shaken, as the IBA specifies, and the White Russian floats cream over vodka and coffee liqueur, as the IBA’s note on the Black Russian describes.

The method is the one in how to taste whisky and how to taste rum: a small measured pour in a tulip glass, nosing slowly with the mouth slightly open, then two sips. Vodka asks for one change. Taste it twice, at room temperature and again from the freezer.

At room temperature the crop shows. Wheat reads soft and a little sweet, rye has an edge of spice, and potato feels heavier in the mouth. From the freezer the same vodkas move closer together, because cold thickens the texture and holds the aroma down. A 40% vodka will not freeze in a home freezer.

Judge the texture first, thin or oily, sharp or round, then the finish. A clean vodka fades evenly; a rough one leaves heat at the back of the throat. Sip water between samples and measure each pour; a 25ml measure of a 40% vodka counts as one UK unit, as ABV vs proof works through.

Spend where the vodka fills the glass. In a Vodka Martini, chilled in a Martini glass, the bottle shows; in a Moscow Mule the ginger beer leads, and a mid-priced vodka does the job. What spirits to stock puts vodka in its place on the shelf.

The name comes first: vodka means the spirit meets category 15, and a flavour with the word vodka means category 31, which may be sweet. The strength comes second, and under paragraph (b) of category 15 it cannot read under 37.5%. Third, if the crop was anything but grain or potatoes, paragraph (d) requires the words produced from and the crop. Fourth, an allergen added after distilling has to be declared, because the gluten exemption covers only the cereals in the distillate.

Most of the rest describes process. Triple distilled, five times filtered and charcoal filtered have no definition in the British spirit drinks regulation. American rules attach charcoal filtered to a minimum treatment, and the 2020 rule keeps any count of distillations optional and lets it be understated but never overstated. None of these words says how a vodka will taste, which is why the glass is the better guide.

A country of origin tells you where the bottle was made, not what it was made from. The category 15 definition names no place, so a vodka can be made anywhere a crop can be fermented.

Once distilling has had its way, the crop is the main variable left, and it shows most where the vodka has the glass to itself. The label column follows category 15 and category 31; the texture notes are the ones the vodka page gives.

Wheat, rye and barley contain gluten, and the first two are common vodka crops. Annex II of the retained Regulation (EU) 1169/2011 lists cereals containing gluten among the allergens a label must declare, and in the same entry makes an exception for “cereals used for making alcoholic distillates including ethyl alcohol of agricultural origin”, so a wheat vodka carries no gluten declaration.

The exemption covers the distilled spirit only; anything added after distilling, as in a flavoured vodka, is declared on its own terms under the same annex, so read those labels.

The British definitions of vodka, flavoured vodka and ethyl alcohol of agricultural origin are the retained Regulation (EC) 110/2008, Annex I and Annex II, categories 15 and 31, on legislation.gov.uk. The American standard is 27 CFR 5.142, with flavoured spirits under 27 CFR 5.151, and the 2020 change is T.D. TTB-158 in the Federal Register. The gluten exemption is Annex II of the retained Regulation (EU) 1169/2011. The Moscow Mule, Bloody Mary and Black Russian measures are the IBA’s; the histories are Wikipedia’s summaries of the published record, each linked where it is used.