Boru Vodka

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a good time and has recovered from the holiday. I'll do a roundup of the sparkling wines from the weekend for Wednesday's post, but today I'll post a brief vodka review.

Julia enjoys a vodka tonic, and as I was grabbing a few odds and ends from the liquor store I needed to get some vodka. In my neverending quest to try new things from new areas, I almost laughed when I saw an Irish vodka named after the legendary king Brian Bóruma mac Cennétig.

Ireland makes more than just beer and whiskey, though this product is much smoother and more refined than the Emerald Isle's version of moonshine called Poitín (sometimes anglicized as Poteen or Potcheen). Here I'm trying the standard vodka, but they also produce varieties flavored with lemon, orange, and "crazzberry" (cranberry + raspberry).

Boru Vodka
$22/1.75L, 40% abv.
Distilled from grain, though if there was ever a candidate for a potato vodka... It's got a basic clear spirit aroma with a good bit of a kick to it on the initial taste and the finish. For that reason, I'd recommend this as more of a mixing vodka for cocktails. In the vodka tonic it worked out well, and I found out that it also made for a decent screwdriver. While it doesn't really stand out great on its own, there's a huge marketing potential out there with the many thousands of Irish pubs in the US. Why not replace all those Russian bottles with the clear cool spirit of Éire? It's last call and there's a round of Boru shots during that tearful singing of "Danny Boy"...