Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
32
Vodka
Russians call it a blessing and a curse. No Russian family is untouched by
vodka, for better or for worse. Your trip to Russia will invariably involve at
least a taste of the national drink. Even its name is fundamental: It's a
diminutive of the Russian word for “water”
(voda).
EVOLUTION OF A SPIRIT
Some credit (or blame) the Genoans for introduc-
ing the concept of distilled alcohol to Russia in the late 1300s, not long after
western European alchemists discovered its wonders. Monks in Moscow's
Kremlin were soon brewing “bread wine,” using grain, which was ubiquitous in
Russia, instead of grapes. Though it was initially intended as a medicine, the
drink became so popular that Ivan III (The Great) introduced the first vodka
monopoly soon afterward. His grandson Ivan IV (The Terrible) recognized its
dangers as well as its power, and introduced the first of several unsuccessful
attempts by Russian leaders to ban the drink.
Vodka was absorbed into Russian court ceremony, and by the 17th century,
Russian merchants and nobles were exporting their vodkas across Europe.
Recipes expanded to include vodkas scented with cherries, apples, pears,
blackberries, acorns, caraway seeds, dill, and sage, and the drink gradually
grew stronger. The Russian chemist Mendeleyev—the author of chemistry's
Periodic Table of Elements—played a key role in establishing vodka standards
used to this day. In his late-19th-century doctoral dissertation, he determined
what he considered the scientifically ideal proportion of alcohol to water
(40%). Most vodkas today are 40% alcohol (80 proof ), twice as strong as the
40-proof vodkas of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Czar Nicholas II tried to ban alcohol during World War I to keep the troops
clearheaded, and Lenin kept the ban in place after taking over in 1917. Stalin
reversed this policy, expanding state-run vodka production and including a
glass of low-quality vodka in the daily rations for construction workers, road
workers, and dock workers. Reviving a tradition that dated back to Peter the
Great's time, the military brass added vodka to Red Army rations in World War
II. The pendulum swung back in the 1980s under Mikhail Gorbachev, whose
anti-alcohol campaign was disastrous to his reputation and to government
coffers, which had enjoyed substantial revenues from state-run distilleries.
Boris Yeltsin had no such distaste for vodka, personally or politically. His free-
market reforms encouraged innovation and competition, but also flooded
stores with cheap, poorly regulated, and often dangerous new spirits.
THE MAGIC BEVERAGE TODAY
Today rules are tighter than in the 1990s,
and rich Russians are demanding ever-purer and more innovative vodkas. Most
vodkas are distilled from wheat, rye, or barley malt or some combination of
the three, though village distillers prefer cheaper sources such as corn and
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