December 2023 155
Review: Impressions of Smirnoff’s Red, White & Merry Vodka in Cocktails vs Its Lack of Vibrant Flavor
Smirnoff is one of the most prominent vodka producers in the world. The brand is consistently ranked number one as the best-selling vodka in the world, according to The Spirits Business. The publication reports that Smirnoff’s sales grew by 6% in 2022, selling 28.1 million cases, up from 26.5 million in 2021.
One reason for the consistently high ranking could be due to the extensive vodka offerings Smirnoff provides. In addition to the classic No. 21 vodka, the company makes 26 different flavors and zero-sugar infusions. The company’s desire to deliver products that excite their customers has also led to offering seasonal, limited-release flavors. Smirnoff Peppermint Twist was initially a limited-release product in 2015. Red, White & Berry was also initially a limited-release product in the summer of 2016. Both are now a part of the company’s vibrant flavors product line. One year, Smirnoff even made vodka-filled Christmas ornaments.
For the 2023 holiday season, the company is offering a limited-release Red, White & Merry vodka. We had a chance to try the festive liquor to see if it would get us into the holiday spirit. As a Sommelier and wine and spirits writer, I have taste-tested and reviewed dozens of vodka brands and products over the past 20 years. We drew upon this knowledge for this review. Here are our thoughts.
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Smirnoff Red, White & Merry vodka is a gluten-free alcoholic beverage that blends natural tastes and certified hues to form a drink that highlights the flavors of the festive season, such as orange, cranberry, and ginger. The flavor inspiration is derived from the unique taste of the 2022 limited-time product of Smirnoff’s Smirnoff Ice seasonal release, Red, White & Merry Ice Holiday Punch. The malt beverage’s flavors incorporate cranberry, black cherry, blood orange, and ginger.
Possessing a rosy berry shade, each 1.5-ounce serving of Red, White & Merry’s 60-proof vodka contains 89 calories. The calorie amount is marginally less than a regular shot and a half of unflavored vodka with 96 calories, as reported by Medical News Today. The reduction in calories is probably a result of the alcohol by volume (ABV) being somewhat lower in flavored vodkas than in traditional unflavored varieties that only include water and ethanol. The United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives stipulates a minimum of 40% ABV in standard, unflavored vodka, while flavored varieties can have a lower ABV owing to the liquor’s dilution upon adding sugars and other flavorings. Smirnoff’s festive product contains 30% ABV.
Smirnoff provides a solution for all cranberry vodka enthusiasts who manually make DIY cranberry-infused vodka each year to savor during the holidays. There will no longer be a necessity to crush, strain, or or most notably, wait, while the vodka steeps for weeks with fresh berries to savor the flavor of an infused drink. Smirnoff’s Red, White & Merry holiday bottle offers cranberry taste in a no-mess, simple-to-open 750ml bottle.
Just like all of Smirnoff’s vodka sold in the US, the base ingredient of the gluten-free vodka is corn. Most vodkas are gluten-free since the distillation process removes the gluten, whether derived from wheat, barley, other grains, potatoes, grapes, or corn. Nonetheless, utilizing corn guarantees that the base ingredients of the product are suitable for those with celiac disease. Smirnoff does not include any hidden components that could contain gluten in its flavoring products.
The spirit is triple-distilled to create a balanced taste. The triple distillation process helps purify the vodka, ensuring a smooth palate free of impurities, with lighter natural flavors and a well-rounded character.
Smirnoff’s Red, White & Merry promises citrus and berry fruit flavors, complemented by the warming, spicy characteristics of ginger. The combination reminds us of the flavors we enjoy during the holiday season, like warm spiced mulled wine, cranberry sauce, and gingerbread. We tried the vodka neat in a tulip-shaped wine glass without ice and poured over ice in a rocks glass for our tasting. The tulip glass will help maximize the aromatics of the vodka, as the shape of the glass is so important as it helps concentrate the aromas, leading them toward the nose.
We found that the vodka has a fresh, fruity aroma, delivering on the ripe red berry and juicy citrus expectations from the product description. The texture of the vodka is thick, with a dense consistency that coats the mouth in a honeyed, sugary syrup when tasting the product. The taste is sweet and fruity, with a prevailing cranberry flavor on the front palate and a heavy, sugary, somewhat artificial sweetness on the finish. We found berry and cherry flavors rather than citrus. This left us wanting more of a prominent orange citrus taste and searching for the zesty, warming, spicy characteristics that ginger flavoring should provide. Trying the product with ice helps dilute the overall sweetness. However, the vodka’s dominant flavor is cranberry.
Though Smirnoff is one of the world’s most popular and best-selling vodkas, the company does not inflate its price. Smirnoff No. 21 vodka is one of the more affordable vodkas available on the market. The company’s flavored vodka options follow similar pricing guidelines, with the average cost for a 750ml bottle of Smirnoff Red, White & Merry being around $14, similar to the brand’s Peppermint Twist and Pink Lemonade vodkas.
Fitting with the season, the bottle is wrapped like a Christmas present in a red casing, with gold accents and red glitter to bring a little glitz and glamour to the holidays. Following the initial release of the seasonal product on November 1, 2023, Smirnoff’s Red, White & Merry vodka will be on sale through the end of the year to compliment any holiday occasion. The vodka is available at alcohol retailers nationwide.
Like any vodka, Smirnoff’s Red, White & Merry makes the perfect base for an array of martinis, mixed drinks, and holiday cocktails. Though the vodka’s sweet, fruity flavors are prominent enough to mix the liquor with club soda or seltzer simply, we found it best mixed into cocktails with additional flavored mixers. Beverages like ginger beer, pure cranberry juice, and lemon-lime soda, with garnishes like fresh herbs and citrus wheels, help balance the overall sweetness while enhancing the overall flavor of the vodka.
Use it in cocktails to add fruit-forward flavors to a festive Christmas punch, enhance cranberry orange crush cocktails, or make Ina Garten’s big batch Cosmopolitans, perfect for entertaining a group of friends this holiday season. For those feeling adventurous, we suggest adding it as a cranberry twist on a Moscow mule, intensifying the cranberry flavor in a classic Madras cocktail, or using it in a frozen Cosmo. The icy cocktail is the best use of leftover cranberry sauce we have tasted.
Smirnoff’s Red, White & Merry includes such a unique combination of ingredients that no other flavored vodka on the market is exactly like it. Of course, other citrus, ginger, and cranberry vodkas are available. However, Smirnoff is the only one to put the three flavors together.
Smirnoff’s vodka, with its cranberry flavor, was our major taste comparison as we compared it to Deep Eddy Cranberry Vodka. Both the brands manufacture their products based on a corn foundation and hence, are considered as naturally gluten-free vodkas. The Texas-made product, similar to Smirnoff’s, has extensive distribution all over the country and is sold for around the same price.
In terms of alcohol content, Deep Eddy Cranberry vodka has a bit more bite than Smirnoff’s with its 35% ABV. Their product goes through the process of distillation notably ten times as compared to Smirnoff’s three times distillation. This additional refinement enables a creation of super smooth vodka. This vodka is characterized by its clean, comprehensive palate and smooth texture. Its authenticity lies in the fact that it’s created with genuine cranberry juice compared to natural flavorings, facilitating a more genuine, sharper cranberry flavor compared to Smirnoff’s. Deep Eddy’s also amalgamates pure cane sugar, ensuring a perfectly balanced taste of sweetness combined with tart fruity notes.
With holiday season around the corner, if you’re considering to buy a bottle of Smirnoff’s Red, White & Merry, our opinion is that, we genuinely appreciate a product that tends to help us get into that vivacious, holiday spirit. Although we expected a lot from Smirnoff’s Red, White & Merry vodka, we liked how the vodka is gluten-free and comparatively has lower alcohol content than other vodka products. We appreciated that the product is pocket-friendly and is widely available all over the country throughout the year.
However, to our surprise, the optimal use of Smirnoff’s vodka was observed as a base alcohol for cocktails, involving other strong-flavored mixers. This notion raised a question in our minds – If we need to add additional fruit juices and hard mixers to get that fruity, spicy taste, why not use a standard unflavored vodka. However, we found the bright red packaging of the bottle to be very fun and joyful. This is definitely a showpiece vodka that brings a festive appeal to your bar cart or could serve as a sophisticated gift for any vodka enthusiast.
Read the original article on Tasting Table.
Savoring George Dickel’s Newest Whiskey: An Exclusive First Taste of their 18-Year-Old Bourbon
Tennessee whiskey brand George Dickel just released its oldest expression to date, an expensive 18-year-old bourbon that is complex, balanced, and not overly oaky despite spending nearly two decades maturing in barrels.
George Dickel is the second best known Tennessee whiskey brand after Jack Daniel’s, the behemoth that dominates all whiskey categories. This Diageo-owned brand is produced at Cascade Hollow Distilling Co. in the small town of Tullahoma, and the operation has been overseen by general manager and distiller Nicole Austin since 2018. That’s a very good thing—Austin has revitalized the brand with releases like the Bottled-in-Bond series, the experimental Cascade Moon lineup, and the introduction of a bourbon into the portfolio. That last one might seem a bit subjective, because technically most Tennessee whiskey is bourbon that has undergone the extra step of charcoal filtration before going into barrels (something some whiskey fans will debate all day). In a recent interview with Robb Report, Austin admitted that calling some of the whiskey bourbon and some Tennessee whiskey can be hard to explain. “The category gets more and more varied, so this is my perspective of what I think of as a classic American whiskey flavor profile,” she said. “Someone could argue with me that I’m doing it wrong, but they’re not in charge, so by all means!”
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Dickel Bourbon was introduced in 2021 as an eight-year-old expression—and one that we really loved. Austin started looking at these older barrels in 2019, and she says that the new 18-year-old is not just an older version of last year’s 17-year-old release. “I knew people were interested in these older expressions from Dickel,” she said. “When I was looking at barrels for the 17-year-old Tennessee whiskey, I found some that had a lot more of that vanilla and fruit character and I set them aside for this… I chose to call them bourbon because it was a continuation of the same reason that Dickel Bourbon exists—this is an older version of that flavor profile.”
Many of the barrels that went into this release were nearly empty, having lost 70 to 80 percent in angel’s share, or evaporation, over nearly 20 years of hot Tennessee summers and cold winters. Surprisingly, that did not result in a dried-out oak bomb of a whiskey. On the contrary, there are delicate fruits on the palate, along with sour apple, cherry-lime soda, chocolate-orange, vanilla pudding, and a burst of citrus. Some mellow smoky oak permeates throughout, culminating in a warm and lengthy finish, thanks to the whiskey being bottled at 90 proof. Still, Austin acknowledges that $510 is a lot to ask someone to pay for a bottle of Dickel, a brand not normally associated with such high prices, but she feels confident about its value. “I want people to trust that this liquid is rooted in something I believe in,” she said. “Finding American whiskey this old is rare, especially with this flavor profile.” Besides, the naysayers don’t really bother her. “No matter what you do, someone is going to be mean to you on the Internet. Once you realize that, it’s freeing, so I might as well make the whiskey I want to make.”
Austin also offered a tease about what we can expect from Dickel over the coming year. Two new bottled-in-bond blends are on the way, and one will be the oldest in the series to date (she tastes them blind, so this was not by design). Also, there will be a new Cascade Moon collaborative release with Todd Leopold of Colorado’s Leopold Bros., and it might incorporate some whiskey aged in refill barrels. In the meantime, you can find Dickel Bourbon Aged 18 Years available to purchase from Total Wine.
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Encouraging a Shift in Perspective: Considering Boxed Wine
There is no doubt about it: Boxed wine has a bad reputation. Some might even characterize bag-in-box wine as “fast, cheap, easy, and fake” which is definitely not a compliment when it comes from foodies or wine snobs.
“You are what you eat so don’t be fast, cheap, easy, or fake.”
Is box wine “fast”?
Is box wine “cheap”?
Is box wine “easy”?
Is box wine “fake”?
Box wine is fast, priced reasonably (for the most part), easy, and most definitely authentic. Plus, it’s growing in popularity. Indeed, with growing concerns about environmental issues, wine-in-a-box is garnering increased attention. There are a number of good reasons you might want to reconsider box wine—including that it might actually taste good!
A swift Google search will uncover a variety of recent articles discussing the best boxed wines to buy. Check out, for instance, the New York Times article “10 Boxed Wines That Are Really Good, Seriously” or Decanter’s bag-in-box must-try list, which was compiled following the blind tasting of 70 different varieties available in the UK. Tasting Table even goes so far as to list “11 Boxed Wine You Should Always Buy,” notable particularly as the top two boxed wines on their list are from Franzia.
Despite its reputation, Franzia is undeniably popular and proudly acknowledges the environmental advantages of drinking their wine over the bottled variety. On the “green practices” page of their website, they highlight: “When you walk out of the store with a box of Franzia, there’s a noticeable spring in your step. Why? Because your carbon footprint is suddenly a whole lot lighter…” However, while the carbon savings might be valid, the production specifics of the wine are infamously unclear, making it challenging to discern what other environmental impacts could be lurking behind the packaging.
Mass-produced wines, like those marketed by Franzia, necessitate a large production model to achieve an economy of scale. This makes the price so affordable that the actual taste becomes negligible. Nevertheless, if we go by sales, people do appreciate it. Franzia has recently initiated a new marketing campaign entitled, “Franz for life” that appears to be aiming to cultivate, or at least tap into, the sort of cult following enjoyed by the producers of another mass-produced wine, “Two Buck Chuck” (whose founder was the original creator of Franzia, even though the brand was eventually sold to Coca Cola).
In essence, whether Franzia is quality wine or not, it’s popular, and the benefits of box wine are numerous.
The winery in the United States that is best known for breaking the mold—quite literally by leaping into it—is Tablas Creek Vineyard. In 2022, they allocated 100 cases of their premium rosé to 3L (bag-in-)boxes. Selling at nearly $100 each, Tablas Creek bravely took a risk and found they were able to soar: The initial 352 boxes, their first endeavor into the bag-in-box format, sold out in merely four hours. On the strength of this initial release, and subsequent ones, Tablas Creek has been recognized for establishing that high-quality boxed wine can be marketed and, importantly, sold at fine wine price points. Bag-in-box wine is widely recognized in certain locations, and owners like Tablas Creek are showcasing the model’s viability here too.
If you need (or want) to taste to believe, as of this post, you can still secure a 3L box of Tablas Creek’s highly admired Rhone-style red, though I wouldn’t rely on it being available for an extended period (as the rosé and white blend are already sold out). I must caveat that this recommendation contradicts my previous advice regarding thinking out-of-the-box for gift options this festive season. However, if you can attain some, I certainly won’t pass judgment on whether you gift it to a friend or keep it all to yourself.
Discover The Rolling Stones’ New Signature Rum ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ at New Port Richey Distillery
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. – Turning out distinctive bottles of spirits is nothing new for Spencer Wolf and his team at The Point Distillery in New Port Richey. But, there’s some special rum waiting in the warehouse – 28,000 gallons for The Rolling Stones.
Within days, they’ll start bottling the new signature rum from the Stones called “Crossfire Hurricane.” The term refers to the lyrical place where Mick Jagger was born in the iconic song Jumpin’ Jack Flash.
This distillery was selected among many competitors anxious to bottle the rum. It became the drink of choice for the band when they spent time in the Caribbean, honing their music in their early days together.
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Wolf mentioned that, contrasting certain celebrities who merely lend their names, the Stones possess the rum brand and have been thoroughly involved in the design of both the rum and its unique bottle.
“The smallest aspects have not escaped the attention of Mick Jagger,” Wolf stated. “Moreover, they desired a product that was consistent with their image.”
The evidence is easy to spot.
Wolf added, “On inspecting the back label, you will find their signatures. The tongue, a logo probably recognisable by most people globally, is here.”
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To coin some titles from the Stones, Wild Horses couldn’t drag Wolf away from the satisfaction he and his team feel.
“Oh, we were beyond ecstatic. This is the most famous iconic rock band in the world,” he said.
Wolf said making the intricate bottle for a local brand of bourbon, Von Payne, helped convince the Stones to bring it to Pasco County.
“And I think it was said ‘if you can do that bottle you can do ours,’” Wolf said.
Wolf, who is originally from Great Britain, said his accent may have played a small part in it.
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The Rolling Stones are scheduled to perform in Orlando on June 3. What are the chances they might come to New Port Richey to see their rum being bottled?
“Discretion prevents me from responding to that inquiry, however, would I be taken aback if they appear to witness their rum being produced? Certainly not,” he articulated with a grin.
Wolf claimed that he is planning to commence the rum bottling process by the start of December, and the product is anticipated to hit the store shelves around the beginning of the upcoming year. He stated that it would potentially retail around $37 per bottle.
“I believe the Stones wished for it to be priced in a way it’s affordable for their countless millions of followers,” he expressed.
Burglary Suspect Found Unconscious on Florida Bar’s Stage After Excessive Beer Drinking, Says Police
The suspect in a bar burglary was caught at the crime scene when a worker found him intoxicated and passed out on stage, according to detectives in Central Florida.
It happened Monday, Nov. 27, at the County Line Bar near Weirsdale, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said in an affidavit. Weirsdale is about 60 miles northwest of Orlando.
A bar employee reports she was taking out the trash around 6 a.m. when she spotted a man “sleeping on stage.”
The 31-year-old suspect was awake and still at the bar when deputies arrived minutes later, the report says.
“When asked if he thought it was standard to step into an unoccupied, shut bar and freely take drinks, his reply indicated he usually likes being served,” wrote the deputy who made the arrest in his report.
Examiners indicate that the man gained access to the bar through an unlocked door leading to the patio.
Security footage shows the man arriving just past 2 a.m., instantly starting to help himself to numerous beer bottles, as per officials. (He is viewed at one point carrying a six-pack, according to the report.)
Around the hour of 6 a.m., the perpetrator is noted moving from a private booth “to the area of the stage where he lies down” and dozes off, the report suggests.
The suspect was charged with burglary and felony petit theft, officials said.
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