20 Popular Vodka Brands To Stock In Your Home Bar In 2024

While vodka is a commonly ranked favorite type of spirit among drinkers, Spirytus is best used as part of a well-informed repertoire of cocktails and the occasional boozy dessert. Now, like several other brands on this list, we wouldn’t recommend drinking New Amsterdam straight or in a spirit-forward cocktail like a martini. After all, it’s not necessarily smooth, so brace your palate for a bit of a burn.

Once distilled, Beluga adds honey, milk thistle, and oat to give flavoring before bottling its famous spirit. This super-premium vodka is impressively pure and smooth, with notes of vanilla, sage, white pepper, and cream. But if you enjoy the spirit more when mixed, a range of the best vodka-based drinks can be created with any brand on our list.

The brand, owned by LVMH, is named after Belweder, the Polish presidential palace in Warsaw, and is produced in one of the world’s longest-continuously operating Polish distilleries. The vodka brand maintains strict production guidelines to keep its consistently premium taste, ensuring that each step of the process occurs on Polish soil, using locally-sourced raw ingredients. It’s also the only vodka brand to be awarded the Positive Luxury Butterfly Mark, which recognizes its commitment to quality craftsmanship and environmental responsibility. Infusing vodka with fruits or herbs lengthens the creation process by around three weeks. These vodkas have much stronger flavor profiles than plain vodka and can be found on the market in different colors with varying aromas.

Stroh Rum, 160 Proof

As well as being produced with an original Russian recipe, the spirit is filtered with diamonds. It comes decorated with almost two thousand diamonds set in gold and, despite the price tag, is sold out worldwide. However, watch out for potential cross-contamination and hidden gluten in vodkas that may add flavorings or other ingredients after distillation. For flavored vodkas, it can be more difficult to fully guarantee that flavored ingredients haven’t come in contact with any trace of allergens during the suppliers’ production processes. There are many ways to enjoy vodka, but the main thing to ensure is that it’s enjoyed ice cold.

It’s a similar process to what’s done when producing gin (as vodka and gin production start off the same way) and results in any number of different varieties. To make vodka, the potato or grain is heated to form a mash before being mixed with yeast to produce ethanol. This fermentation process can take anything from one day to two weeks before the liquid is purified to remove any odors or off-notes. Then, it’s distilled in column stills or pot stills to reach its desired purity. Try it with vermouth and a twist of lemon for the perfect afternoon sipping cocktail.

Spirytus Rektyfikowany

Its corn factor adds some sweetness to it, plus a fuller, creamier mouthfeel than lower-proof vodkas. The opinions and recommendations are based on our expertise with vodka, along with our personal preferences and firsthand experiences when sampling the vast majority of listed vodka brands. Stolichnaya 100 is best served ice-cold, allowing its velvety texture and subtly sweet flavor to shine.

Boyd & Blair Potato Vodka 151

With such a high alcohol content, Devil Springs Vodka is mainly used in mixed drinks or creating flavored vodkas. Vodka brands typically bottle their vodkas at 40% ABV or 80 proof, which is the minimum alcohol content for unflavored vodkas globally. We looked at the process used for distilling the spirit, the number of times each bottle was distilled as well as any unique factors included during this process.

The 12 Strongest Cocktails You Can Order

If you’re indulging in Eastern European fare, having a cold bottle of Stoli on the table is highly recommended. The iconic original Absolut Vodka is crisp and pure, with a consistently reasonable average price of just $20 for a fifth. For those who prefer to drink their vodka straight, it’s worth upgrading to the luxury copper bottle Absolut Elyx, which is made with single estate winter wheat and shines sans mixers. It even sells a zero-sugar line of flavored vodkas (which makes for a refreshing, low-calorie spritz when combined with soda water).

Absolut: Overall best vodka

• Its flavor profile is marked by a clean and sharp taste with subtle hints of sweetness and grain.
• If you want a clean, neutral vodka to drink on its own, in cocktails, or subdued with other mixers, this is the bottle we’d recommend.
• It’s said that Beach invented the Zombie to cure a customer’s hangover, but ended up making the customer feel like one of the living dead.
• You’ll soon picture yourself on a frosty winter day by the lake in Poland — and enjoy what is hopefully the beginning of a new way to think about vodka.
• This vodka has aromas and flavors of citrus and rose that are soft and subtle, not overpowering, and it blends well in just about any cocktail you can mix.

Indulge in the allure of Belvedere Intense 100 Proof and let its depth and complexity captivate your senses. Made in Austria, this spiced rum has been using the same secret recipe since 1832. Tasters report a slight vanilla or butterscotch flavor that can be detected underneath the strong burn, but it’s advisable to use it in your favorite rum cocktail instead of drinking it straight. The exception to this is in the uncommon instance where gluten is added post-distillation, such as in some flavored spirits or those finished in beer barrels. But unflavored vodka is unaged and neutral by law, so it shouldn’t contain any gluten additives post-distillation. After eliminating the vodkas we liked least, we repeated the same testing steps using our finalists.

Though the best vodka out there is ultimately the one you enjoy drinking the most, for this guide we focused our research on brands that are widely available at major retailers across the country. And to get a general idea of which vodkas other experts like most, we read through reviews from Liquor.com, Punch, Food Network, and Imbibe magazine. This vodka has aromas and flavors of citrus and rose that are soft and subtle, not overpowering, and it blends well in just about any cocktail you can mix. It has the silkiest texture of all the vodkas we tried, and it doesn’t lose this exceptional creaminess when diluted. This bottle also lacks the harsh alcohol burn on the nose or palate that makes many vodkas off-putting. Made with Swedish water and Swedish winter wheat, Absolut Vodka is a premium Swedish vodka that can be enjoyed in countless ways, from neat to straight-up sipping.

It’s distilled using a four-column still process and local Polish water before being charcoal filtered and bottled. Everything from the delicious spirit inside to the classy, translucent bottle makes Belvedere live up to its name, which translates as “beautiful to see”. A head and shoulders above most other vodkas on the market, Beluga stands tall as one of the most premium vodkas available. It’s a vodka that combines superior ingredients and expertise to create a deliciously smooth spirit that’s endlessly enjoyable to drink.

Vodka is one of the world’s most popular spirits, yet very few people in the US seem to fully appreciate it. ClockworkLemon helps those at home to make the most out of their ingredients to make incredible meals and drinks that people will love. Additionally, spirits with a proof higher than 80 are best mixed with other beverages and consumed in moderation because they are extremely potent. Check out our related articles to learn if vodka sauce has alcohol, if vodka is a spirit, and if vodka is gin.

As a relatively straightforward spirit, vodka can be distilled from virtually anything. It’s mostly produced by fermenting potatoes or cereal grains like wheat or rye. The majority of plain vodkas—and almost all Russian vodkas—are created with wheat, while Polish vodka favors rye, and Finnish vodka goes for barley.

The company also produces organic gin (though that’s not exactly relevant for our purposes). It’s incredibly clean, crisp, and bright, which makes it a wonderful addition to cocktails where vodka is the star ingredient. We recommend pairing it with ingredients that are light and fresh, strong vodka as well, like herbs and citrus (basil vodka lemonade, anyone?). Whether your jam is something tropical and fruity like guava lime or something more daring like habanero, we can almost guarantee Pinnacle has a flavor for you.

Though the alcoholic content of Spirytus seems like it would deliver a punchy wallop, the tasting profile is surprisingly neutral and smooth. As a result, home brewers can get creative with various fruit infusions and creative concoctions made with different flavors of liqueurs. The resulting mixtures can be sipped or added to desserts to build interesting layers of flavor. Streaking ahead of Grey Goose as we break into the top two most powerful vodka brands in the world is Absolut, with a total score of 32.9%. It follows last year’s launches of Absolut Mexico, a denim-clad bottle designed to keep the vodka chilled and Absolut Oz, released in collaboration with Australian film director Baz Luhrmann.