The Russian Solvent Weakens (Ya nye lyublyu Stoli!!!) (Stolichnaya Vodka)

Member Name: "420565

Product:	Stolichnaya Vodka
Date:	24/03/03 (393 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The word VODKA appears on the label

Disadvantages: Hårgalåten, Judy Dench

I don't love Stolichnaya. I love vodka, and it is precisely this love of Russia's water of life that tempers my taste for Stolichnaya specifically. In the few years that I've actively consumed vodka with the passion necessary to form firm opinions regarding specific brands (also the passion that complements my now keen ability to discern between properties of each brand with my eyes closed), I've tasted nearly all there is of the stuff to taste. This finely fermented Russian cousin of mine and I have been there for each other through thick and thin, through sick and sin. Together we've experienced and survived the introduction of such unwelcomed additives as chocolate and vanilla, two of the most blasphemous culprits ever to befoul vodka's unfaltering alcoholic regime. And, "slova bogu" for each other's company, we've even managed to laugh about it. Just as long as pure, unadulterated VODKA is there waiting for me like a designated driver at the end of a particularly eventful evening on the town, all the Smirnoff Ice, Kleiner Feigling, Bacardi Rigo and the rest of the novelty mockeries teenage girls slosh down at parties in an attempt to seem sophisticated are free to come and go as they please.

But then every once in a while will come along a very poor representative of the rapidly fading out Golden Generation of pure vodkas. It's monstrosities like this that give teeny-bopper vodka/fruit/confection mixers an excuse to burst their way bellicosely into the spirit scene. Stolichnaya is one of these.

For as long as I've regularly been drinking vodka, I've fallen back on Finlandia, Absolut, and Smirnoff as my old standbys. They're my Three Amigos, consistently good, pure, and uncomplicated. But through various social circles I've heard an ostensible great many praises of Stolichnaya extolled quite fervently. Though it's always been on the shelves and is rarely seen in the
company of emasculating flavour-accentuators, I had somehow never tried it. Last week, or whenever it was that I was in England, however, I was blessed with many an opportunity to edify myself in this respect. And so one of these many opportunities I took.

It was my third night in London. I've been to Britian and England quite often, but for some unexcusable reason, I had never been in London proper. I still haven't found a way to forgive myself for this iniquity, and it was this hulking transgression of social demands (that is, you haven't lived till you've seen London), or more accurately the intent contemplation of this transgression, that eventually caused me to drown my sorrows in the fiery clear stuff. My English university comrade Alex Nichols and I were in a bar somewhere in SoHo. Not a tavern, no, not a dive. We're still at least twenty years too young for that. We were in a pretty little club where all the pretty little people spend their pretty little evenings, and end up quite attractively puking their pretty little guts out all over the prettly little place by the time things wind down. And it was just so bloody pretty that I felt guilty and sad for not having visited London earlier. So I sought me a vodka. Of course there was the usual. Smirnoff, Absolut, and the like. No Finlandia, though. But they had Stoli. And as I had never had it, I tried it, much to my great dismay.

I don't know how many shots of Smirnoff, Finlandia, or Absolut it takes to get me tipsy, giddy, or even downright blotto. I always lose track, fancy that. But rest assured that such an amount pales in comparison to the vast quaffs of Stoli I sopped up like the unemployed, middle-aged sponge I am sure to be in another twenty years or so that evening. It didn't even taste that good. Its flavour smacked of a slight bit of acetone spilled into a cup of icewater. It was diluted and, to be honest, kind of grotty. Which may
be why it took so bloody much of it to produce the desired results, who knows. But according to the label, the alcohol content was exactly as much as that of the Smirnoff and the other gibble I've been sucking since babyhood. Now that I recall that evening, I'm actually getting sort of offended. Stoli is insulting!

To add more insult to injury, which has in turn been added to previous insult, and in thus manner perpetuates a very brutal strain of the vicious cycle, it didn't even get me drunk very well. For those who don't know me, or at least haven't seen me drunk (that would mean all of you, unless you were in SoHo last week), I very rarely do anything too off-the-wall. I'm a bit more gregarious, as is common, and often make very random, spontaneous connections between two or more seemingly unrelated things. Like Archimedes and Jewish women with poodles, to name one example that always comes to mind. But, though you may be thinking otherwise, as you're allowed to do as we are all enitled to our own opinions, I'm not really a stupid drunk. Not, however, unless I've been drinking Stolichnaya.

After what seemed like about eleven quarts of the crap, I stripped myself of my pride, dignity, and shirt, climbed staggeringly atop a billiard table and danced to my own amateurly performed rendition of the Hårgalåten (a provincial Swedish folk dance often executed exclisively by old fishermen with pent-up sexual frustrations, accompanied by their ugly fishwives with pent-up sexual frustrations) before the eyes of about 150 intrigued English people. My God, I even sang the bleeding song! (Hence all the Hårgalåten references as of late, in case you've been wondering.) I then proceeded to bow to the ovation, and request that if Dame Judy Dench were among the club's patrons, I would be very much obliged to join her in a round of pool, and end it with more rousing encore of the Hårgalåten. To put it shortly
, I was a very bad ambassador that night, and who do we have to thank but Lady Stolichnaya in all her infinitely overestimated wisdom?

Why did I bother to recount this stupid event? Contrary to popular belief, I'm not bragging. I'm not even remotely proud that I did anything of the sort. But I'm a philanthropist, sacrificing what semblence of self-worth I have left for the sake of all you curious kids out there considering a swig of Stoli Friday next. Don't do it. There are plenty of other alternatives out there. Hell, there's even self-mutilation. Go ahead, carve your ex-girlfriend's name into your neck veins. It may hurt temporarily and the physical scars may last an eternity, but that's pithy in comparison with having flailed about like a Swedish fool, luring an absent Judy Dench from her hidey-hole into my enibriated world of unconventional folk traditions.

But speaking of Swedish fools and alternatives to Stolichnaya, that reminds me of something I once saw and have yet to try. Thor's Hammer Vodka. The poison of very bored Norse gods. Get it? Thor's Hammer. Thor's HAMMERED! HA HA HA!!!

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