Try this on the rocks with a twist of lemon or lime. It’s a subtly sweet vodka with amazing smoothness and roundness and a peppery finish. This Japanese vodka is distilled from 100 percent rice and is bamboo charcoal filtered. There’s a reason you often find it at the top of best-tasting vodkas lists.Ĭhristopher Devern, lead bartender of Red Owl Tavern in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania It is one of the crispest vodkas you can have.

Lewis Caputa, lead bartender of Rosina inside The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas It’s a well-made Polish rye vodka that isn’t distilled from pure GNS (grain neutral spirit), making it a clean vodka to sip and savor. Kimberly Schow, bar director at Hotel Dryce in Fort Worth, Texas To find these surprising sippers from small and large distilleries, we asked a handful of well-known bartenders to tell us the vodkas they’d actually drink straight or on the rocks. There is a lot out there is what we’re saying and there’s a lot that is very sippable with a rock or even on its own. The spirit is massively varied thanks to very different corners of the world making it and the recipe for its mash bill ranging from grains to root vegetables to fruits. That’s a shame because as we’ve said, again and again, vodka is an incredibly nuanced spirit and worth your time, even as a sipper. Vodka dominated alcohol sales for decades until the most recent whiskey revival took hold and pushed the un-aged spirit to the background. But it wasn’t that long ago that the best-selling alcohol in the world was a clear spirit. To say that we write about whisk(e)y a lot is a bit of an understatement.

Gallant vodka review