Pristina Vodka is a quadruple distilled wheat Vodka produced in High River, Alberta in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains just south of Calgary. I have been a fan of Highwood Distillers for a while now; but I was not prepared for what greeted me when I opened a sample bottle Highwood’s Pristina Vodka. Maybe it was the uninspiring bottle and label, or maybe it is just a case of us Canadians being a little too self-conscious to believe we can be as good as everyone else in the world. Whatever the reason, when I put the Pristina in a flight of Vodka samples at a tasting where it was up against an Authentic Russian Vodka called Black Stallion, a real Polish Vodka called Alchemia Czysta, and a Vodka made in France called Grey Goose, I was not expecting what happened.
What happened was that every person at my tasting chose the same Vodka as their favourite, and every person said it wasn’t even close. That favourite, the clear head and shoulders winner without reservation in everybody’s opinion, was of course the Pristina Vodka from Highwood Distillers.
You may read my full review by clicking on the following excerpt:
Review: Pristina Vodka
Please enjoy my review and the included cocktail, the Vodka Tonic.
Words like “hand crafted” and “‘Small Batch” seem to be words thrown about by liquor producers in the same manner that rice and confetti are thrown about at a TV wedding. I guess the theory is that if you throw out enough rhetoric, some of it is bound to stick. So it is refreshing to write about a distillery where the words “hand crafted” and “‘Small Batch” really mean exactly what they imply.
When the first bottle of BELUGA Vodka rolled off the production lines at the Mariinsk Distillery on December 13th, 2002, the brand positioned itself at the highest end of the market niche for Vodka. This is (the brand owners are quick to point out) not a brand for the masses, rather it is a brand which seeks those consumers who wish to separate themselves from those masses in terms of aristocracy, sophistication, and self-realization. In short the company has positioned the BELUGA brand as a “Monumental Spirit.”
Double Cross Vodka
You may click on the following excerpt to read the full review:
The Rum Howler Blog 