OVAL Vodka sponsors Thursday Drink Night!

I’m taking off tomorrow, in the wee hours of the morn’ for Atlanta, where Beleza lounge will be hosting a live Thursday Drink Night event, sponsored by OVAL vodka. Jon Flowers, hilarious writer of Drink Planner, will be joining me, as mixologist Adam Fox shakes (or stirs) up your fantastic new idea for an OVAL vodka cocktail. All you have to do is join us in the Mixoloseum chat room at 7pm EST tomorrow night with your brilliant idea. We’ll even have a webcam set up at Beleza so you can see us “ooo” and “ahhh” over (or spit out and criticize) your cocktail. Just kidding—we’ll play nice!

I like the way Rick Stutz of Kaiser Penguin sets up this challenge. Check it out and make sure to stop in and say hi tomorrow:

Vodka alone accounts for over 20% of spirits sales in the U.S. yet gets not play with the cocktail snobs. Think you're so cool only working with ingredients that taste like tree bark and gasoline? How about mixology where you are in charge of all the flavors? No chance to rest your ass with a delicious Gin. No aged whiskey to do your work for you. Want complex flavor? It's up to you captain. Join us and Oval Vodka for this week's TDN.

Vote for the Official Drink of the Oval Office!

Get to the polls and fulfill your civic duty before it’s too late! No, I’m not talking about politics—I’m talking cocktails. Oval Vodka is looking to find the Official Drink of the Oval Office and it could be your very own creation! Thousands of submissions have already poured in, so don’t miss your chance. All you have to do is create an original cocktail recipe that features Oval Vodka. The polls close Saturday, October 25th at 11:59pm so get to it!

The entries will be narrowed down to five finalists, and those cocktails will be available for tasting and voting at the Oval Vodka Launch Party, which will take place Monday Nov 3rd at the Bryant Park Hotel Cellar Bar. The judging panel, which will include fashion designer Richie Rich of Heatherette, Mike Dawson of MAXIM Magazine and others will announce the winner just in time for Election Day, so we can all welcome the new president with a delicious cocktail. Head over to the Oval Office Site to make your mark and do your part today!

Vodka DOES Matter

Steve attended the "Rediscovering the Traditions of vodka" led by Steve Olson and learned a great lesson on how to engage an audience. Throughout the whole TOTC event, Vodka was criticized, belittled, vilified, marginalized and ultimately disrespected. It's like the old Yogi Berra line..."nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."But with 28% share of the total US spirits market, Olson eloquently made his points that it warrants respect and consideration and can't and shouldn't be ignored. He went on to walk us through a product tasting that was more about sensing the vodka as opposed to tasting it. Darcy O'Neil made the point in the sensory perception session that if you analyze vodka chemically, there aren't any flavor compounds in there... no citrus, no wheat, no potato and certainly no tobacco, peanuts or any other contrived descriptors. What there are however, are components that might trigger a flavor memory or association. And that's what we're really sensing, e.g. not citrus per se, but a compound similar to citric acid that sparks an association in your mind. Steve demonstrated a tasting protocol where you can separate the liquid flavor components from the aromatics. By coating the oral cavity with the vodka, then closing your mouth and breathing out your nose, you can segment the feel of the alcohol from the smell of the volatile compounds. Then breathe in only through your mouth to gauge the quality of the alcohol...it should feel cool like menthol or eucalyptus, not harsh or burning. He went on to demonstrate the difference between a number of brands and show how they not only differed, but had specific characteristics that would make a given vodka the preferable spirit for a given cocktail. At the end of the session, he had turned a roomful of skeptics into advocates.