As a recovering marketing maven, I simply love deconstructing bullshit and their regurgitating reviewers. No one is better/worse at this than the Frozen Wolfie. Watch this tennis match between Alchemia Chocolate Infused Vodka and The Frozen One...
Apart from being a blatant republishing of the distiller's ad copy, neither the distiller, and certainly not Wolfie ever really explain or examine this claim. I will.Alchemia: "The infusion of natural cocoa lends Alchemia Chocolate Vodka its amber coloring... chocolate flavor... and aroma.".
Wolfie: "Alchemia Czekoladowa (pronounced chek-o-la-dova ) is a premium grain distilled vodka from Poland infused with naturally derived cocoa... allowing both colour and flavour to be imparted to the final spirit."
More stolen spew from the regurgitating Wolf Wonder. Does the bottle really resemble an ancient alembic? Hardly, but the Wolfboy is too busy lapping up his free bottle of chocolate-flavored vodka to notice. Stay tuned...Wolfie: "The Alchemia bottle has been designed to resemble an old style alembic which is a laboratory tool used in by ancient alchemists."
Alchemia: "The bottle itself is modeled to resemble a laboratory instrument - an alembic or alchemist's tool."
More unexamined distiller claims...
1. Like all spirits marketing departments, Alchemia promotes their amazing water, which "...comes from the deepest aquifers in the ecologically cleanest area of Poland, aptly named "The Green Lungs of Poland". Surprisingly the next step is to "purify" and filter the shit out of this pure water using reverse osmosis.
Wasn't it already pure enough?
2. Now the Polish marketing boyz go apeshit over their Infusion Process, stating "Flavored vodkas merely add ingredients during the distillation process. Infused vodkas are created by infusing or saturating ingredients in an already distilled vodka."
Folks, this is exactly backwards, and neither Alchemia (how quaint) and Wolfie (how droll) care. Let's examine why...
The Facts...
1. Alchemia aka Wolfie claim that their four-sided, pyramidal bottle was designed to reflect the alembic still.
No flippin way. Even modestly-read imbibers know that alembics are the graceful, curving onion-shaped copper pot still used for hundreds of years (and still used today) to produce spirits and infusions. Here's a classic example (top picture)...
Classic Alembic Still
Alembic Infusion Still
The bottom picture is an alembic designed specifically to infuse fruit, spice or herb essences. In this case the top onion has a perforated internal copper plate which holds the material to be infused. Rising vapors pass through these materials, pick up the essence of them, and finally the infused spirit is condensed and collected.
The very finest gins use this method.
2. Alchemia states that "Flavored vodkas 'merely' add ingredients during distillation (while) Infused vodkas 'infuse' ingredients in already distilled vodka."
The truth is pretty much the opposite. Keep in mind that the vodka market - and especially their flavored versions - are really a pretty modern, mostly marketing phenomena. On the other hand, fine Gin has been made since about 1850 and is the original infused spirit.
Trust me, vodkas are simply mass-produced in incredible quantities and gain their flavor from dumped in artificial or faux "natural" flavorings and spices. In comparison gins tend to use real botanicals. Dig this...
The original cheap and later "bathtub" gins were made in the cheapest way possible, beginning with "cold compounding". The botanicals were simply crushed, maybe bagged and then are left to soak in distilled neutral grain spirits for perhaps a week. The crushed materials and/or bag is then removed, and the gin is filtered and bottled.
The really cheap, bathtub version of gin cooked the crushed botanicals to try to obtain the "essential oils" - the captured oils were then added to tanks (or bathtubs) of neutral spirits. Essentially these purveyors of this rotgut simply boiled the shit out of the crushed botanicals to extract every possible bit of flavoring to toss into the bathtub (not to mention a lot of other unwanted ugly stuff).
Pretty awful. Now lets consider "Gin Head Distillation".
Gin Head Distillation is real infusion and this method is very, very expensive compared to either the cold or oil method. This method uses the pot stills similar to the one shown in the picture above. The botanicals are loaded into a perforated holding compartment on the top of the still, and the distilled vapors pass through, pulling out the essences of the botanicals in the gentlest and purest possible fashion. No crushing, no twigs, no unwanted flavors.
The Gin Head Distillation process is so pure that no filtration is required, and the condensed gin is simply diluted and bottled. Lovely!
Summary...
The method that Alchemia and Wolfie misrepresent as "infusion" is really more like the bathtub gin process. Although some fruits can actually be infused in this way, cocoa requires no "soaking" or "steeping" to gain the essence. The truth...
Just dump it in and voila! Chocolate "infused" vodka. This is actually more a flavoring process, very common for profitable "premiumized" vodkas.
But not for real infusions, like quality Gin.
My point: Wolfie seemingly could not give a rat's ass about Alchemia's transparent marketing claims. He simply repeats them, then publishes a fawning "review", using his amazing, special "vodka tasting methodology" (covered elsewhere).
It's just such a farce....
