Review: AVIV 613 Vodka
Sorry, Easter egg hunters, AVIV 613 Vodka is not named after the area code for Ottawa, Canada. It is rather named for the city in which it is made — Tel Aviv, Israel — and a purported 6/1/3 proportion of ingredients used in its production. I wouldn’t dare try to explain this unique process, so I’ll let AVIV 613 do the job:
Yossi Gold, our master distiller, arrived at the precise formulation of AVIV 613 after three years of trial and error. He begins with wheat and barley distilled three times. To that he adds thrice-distilled alcohol from a mash made from olives, figs, dates, grapes, and pomegranates. He tweaked the quantities of the ingredients, along with the proportions of the alcohol, until he reached the exact flavor notes and strength of each he wanted.
Remember that the distinctive sweet finish of AVIV 613 comes from flavors that are not added to the vodka, but which evolve from the perfect blending of grain and fruit alcohol. Water from the Sea of Galilee, the lowest freshwater source in the world, contributes to it’s unique taste and smoothness.
Distilling AVIV more than 4 times removes too many of its natural flavors. We distill the grains 3 times and the fruits 3 times before they’re blended and distilled 1 more time. Then AVIV goes through 6 filtration processes to make it ultra clean and smooth.
The nose is not any more clearly distinctive than any number of modern, moderately sweet vodkas. You can smell sugar up front on the nose, alongside mild charcoal and flinty earth notes. The sweetness fades with some aeration, leaving behind some more generalized hospital notes. The palate is less sweet than you’d think, with a pleasant silkiness to the body. Given all that goes into the mash, there’s strikingly little flavor to contend with — and certainly no olives or pomegranates. Rather, it arrives alongside quite mild notes of butterscotch, licorice, and a bit of cake frosting on the finish. It’s apt enough for stirring into a cocktail, but hardly something you’d expect to have come from the Sea of Galilee.
80 proof.
B+ / $35 / avivvodka.com [BUY IT NOW FROM DRIZLY]
AVIV 613 Vodka
$35
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