Category Archives: Flavored Vodka

The Pucker brand of liqueurs has been with us for years — you can’t make the infamous appletini without its Sour Apple — and now Pucker is making its way into flavored vodkas, too: Higher proof level, clear spirit instead of day-glo, spiked with natural flavors.

We tasted the “Grape Gone Wild” version — three others are available: apple, citrus and cherry — to see how the company was making the great leap forward into the world of flavored vodkas.

Results: If you like candy, you’ll love Pucker Flavored Vodka. The grape flavor is Jolly Ranchers all the way — Concord grape jelly with an extra teaspoon of sugar on top. The candy store aroma fills the room when the bottle is opened.

Give Pucker some credit though, for all the tooth-aching sweetness, it has managed to make a flavored vodka with no bitter, medicinal finish, always a problem when the “flavored” part makes its exit and the “vodka” (often the rotgut stuff) inevitably takes hold. Pucker Vodka doesn’t have any real bite or funk to it, the finish more like one of your better cough syrups than Robitussin.

That’s a good thing, right?

70 proof.

B / $17 / facebook.com/puckervodka

Skyy’s latest infused vodka is really reaching deep into the produce aisle: Dragon fruit is the flavor of the day.

I am unsure if, outside of playing Fruit Ninja, I’ve ever consumed a dragon fruit, so it’s hard to say how authentic this flavored vodka is. Skyy notes it is also known as the “strawberry pear,” and those seem like apt descriptors. The vodka is naturally flavored with actual dragon fruit, according to the company.

Skyy Dragon Fruit is quite sweet and strawberry is indeed the overwhelming characteristic. Cherry is pretty hefty here, too, giving the vodka a bit of a medicinal tone, but at least it’s not overwhelming. The finish is surprisingly rough for a 70-proof vodka, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth. That doesn’t really balance the sweetness, though: The two are quite at odds with each other as they squabble for dominance.

Probably a great vodka for a punch or a novelty drink (“Dragon martinis all around!”), but not Skyy’s best infusion. (That’d be Passion Fruit.)

B / $13 / skyyinfusions.com

Take Ketel One‘s standard wheat-based, pot-distilled vodka from Holland and add some orange distillate. You now have Ketel One Oranje, a clear spirit at 80 proof with the Cosmo croud distinctly in mind.

Ketel One Oranje is old-school orange-flavored vodka, meaning it’s more bitter than sweet. Oranje is orange peel all the way, and it’s definitely a mixer. Anyone drinking this on the rocks will find it closer to an after-dinner tonic than a fruity libation fit for the beach.

That said, I enjoy Oranje’s pedigree and its authenticity. This is an honest orange-flavored infusion, in the end. It’s just not a very versatile one.

B / $22 / ketelone.com

There are two schools of thought on Bakon — an honest-to-God bacon-flavored vodka — and never the twain shall meet.

One school says this is awesome, at a way to get that highly-prized bacon flavor into an alcoholic spirit.

The other school says it is disgusting.

I won’t be able to sway you either way, but I can give you some impressions at least.

First, do not try to drink Bakon straight. Distilled from potatoes in the U.S. and naturally flavored, the bacon essence here is much too powerful to be consumed this way. Intensely smoky and charcoal-like, it’s bitter and rough, ensuring that you have no hope of completing a single shot without substantial financial compensation.

Bakon realizes this, surely, and offers two standby recipes for the spirit. I tried them both. The first is a chocolate bacon martini, which I couldn’t get down despite loads of whipped cream and chocolate liqueur. The other is considerably better: Using Bakon in a Bloody Mary. Here, the bacon flavor doesn’t become so overpowering, and it manages to complement the tomato juice and spices fairly well. It’s more subtle, but comes across pretty clearly in the aftertaste — if you really love bacon, I have to say this is a winner.

That said, hanging on to Bakon just for the occasional Bloody Mary may not be worth the expense and shelf space. But, like I said, it’s a decision that I’ll never be able to make for you.

B / $30 / bakonvodka.com

You aren’t imagining things: UV Coconut is white. Not clear in a white bottle. It’s white. Like milk.

It’s actually the first white vodka, a naturally-flavored spirit sweetened (considerably) with sugar cane, distilled four times, and left in a murky/milky color for you to figure out how exactly to present it.

The utility is obvious: Blend with pineapple juice and ice and you have a quicky faux pina colada, sans Coco Lopez, that is at least correct in color without having to fake it with that jug of 2% milk that expired last week.

The taste, as mentioned, is overwhelmingly sweet, but the coconut does at least come through a bit. No one will be drinking this straight, of course, and as a super-sugary tropical mixer, it gets the job done well enough. At 60 proof it’s not overly watered down to the point where you’ll have to resort to kicking it up with something else in your drink.

B / $13 / uvvodka.com