Which vodka do you drink neat?

For vodka, the EU requires at least 37.5 percent alcohol, prohibits colouring and allows at most 8 grams of sweetener per litre.

Annex I, category 15, of Regulation (EU) 2019/787 further prescribes that distillation selectively reduces the organoleptic characteristics of the raw materials and of the fermentation by-products, and sets the methanol content at a maximum of 10 grams per hectolitre of alcohol at 100 percent volume. The law thus pushes vodka towards neutrality: whatever character of its own remains is by definition limited. For those who drink it neat, that minimum of 37.5 percent mainly means that at the bottom of the scale there are bottles with less alcohol in the glass than the 40 percent that the Polish Vodka Association calls customary. A lower percentage feels less sharp in the mouth, but also brings less aroma.

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A raw material may only appear on the label if the agricultural ethanol is obtained exclusively from it, as laid down in Article 13(1) of Regulation (EU) 2019/787.

If rye, wheat, barley or potato appears on the bottle, it is not a style designation but a firm statement about all the alcohol in that bottle. If the vodka is not made exclusively from potato or cereals, Annex I, category 15, requires the statement 'produced from …' in the same field of vision as the legal name. The regulation does not list which other agricultural raw materials category 15 still allows, so that mandatory statement is where you read it. The protected designation Polska Wodka is stricter on this point: rye, wheat, barley, oats, triticale or potato, grown in Poland, with all production steps in Poland.

What the raw material does to the mouthfeel is not firmly established by the sources checked. None of them gives a fixed rule saying that rye feels fuller than wheat or potato. There is, however, a point of reference: unflavoured Polska Wodka may contain nothing other than alcohol and water, so everything you experience comes from the distillate and the water. Difford’s Guide calls thick, slowly running legs in the glass an indication of added sweetening, something the EU permits up to 8 grams per litre. So judge the mouthfeel in the glass and use the raw material name as an indication of origin, not as a promise of flavour.

Filtering through activated charcoal mainly removes esters and terpenes; it barely changes methanol and acetaldehyde.

Researchers in the Czech Journal of Food Sciences (2012) ran vodka through a charcoal filter and measured what changed. The ethyl esters of C6, C8 and C10 carboxylic acids disappeared completely, hexyl esters decreased, and of the terpenes camphene and cymene disappeared completely while limonene decreased. Methanol stayed at 10.0 to 11.1 milligrams per litre in all samples, comparable before and after filtering. The tasting panel gave the filtered samples 30 and 33 points, against 22 for the unfiltered sample.

For drinking neat it comes down to this: filtering removes what might bother you, but adds nothing. The researchers themselves noted that their base alcohol was already pure, which kept the analytical differences small and made the panel's verdict say more than the measurement. A bottle that puts ‘charcoal filtered’ on the label therefore promises an absence, not an aroma.

The Polish Vodka Association names 6 to 8 degrees Celsius, chilled but not frozen.

The same brochure states that full flavour and full aroma only come into their own at room temperature, and that freezing is discouraged. Difford’s Guide even prescribes room temperature for a tasting setup. Anyone pouring it neat therefore chooses between two things: cooler, around 6 to 8 degrees, where the alcohol bites less, or at room temperature, where you smell more.

These sources say nothing about texture. The Polish Vodka Association advises against freezing and Difford’s Guide mentions no temperature advantage for mouthfeel. What the sources do support is the other side of the matter: the colder the vodka, the less aroma is released. If you want to assess the bottle, let it warm up a little in the glass.

A tulip-shaped glass that narrows towards the rim keeps the aromas together; Difford’s Guide mentions an ISO-style glass of 25 to 50 millilitres.

A straight glass without narrowing does not hold those aromas, because the narrowing is precisely what gathers the aroma compounds above the liquid. Difford’s Guide gives two practical points on this. First smell the empty glass to check that it is clean. And bring the glass gradually to the nose without swirling, because swirling mainly brings ethanol up and masks the finer aromas; according to that source, the first impression is usually the most telling.

• Tulip shape or ISO model, 25 to 50 millilitres per serving.
• First smell the empty glass for soap residue or a musty smell.
• Don't swirl, but gently bring the glass to your nose.
• If you want to compare, pour equal amounts at the same temperature.

None of the sources reviewed links the number of distillations to what you actually perceive in the glass.

Annex I, category 15, sets requirements for the result and not for the number of times the distillate passes through the column: the distillation must selectively reduce the organoleptic characteristics of the raw materials and keep the methanol content below 10 grams per hectolitre of alcohol at 100 percent volume. A figure such as five times distilled is therefore not a legal designation and is not laid down or checked anywhere. The study in the Czech Journal of Food Sciences also pointed out that a higher flow rate through the charcoal filter did not reduce its effect, which the researchers attributed to the quality of the base alcohol. These sources also make no statement about the price of a bottle.

From the label you can read two things with certainty: the alcohol percentage and, within the rules of Article 13(1), the raw material. That lets you choose a bottle before you open it. How a particular bottle turns out, we discuss at the counter in Bathmen, because a tasting note from our own shelf says more than a number on the packaging. The vodka category here has 245 items from 58 brands from 21 countries, within a range of about 6,500 items.