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News In Brief

I’ll take a shot of your meat-flavored vodka…

Daryl Paranada Jun 30, 2010

Carnivorous cocktails? Oh my.

The Alaska Distillery in Wasilla, Alaska — yes, the town where Sarah Palin served as mayor — has just launched a smoked salmon-flavored vodka.

That tasty beverage joins a bacon-flavored vodka from a Seattle distillery on a shelf of meat-flavored drinks. That vodka’s named, appropriately, “Bakon.” Its website says, “Bartenders have found that the savory aspect of bacon makes a great dominant profile in a cocktail like a Bakon martini with a blue cheese-stuffed olive. But it can also take the back seat, with bacon’s smoky flavor subtly enhancing the taste in a concoction like a Chocolate Martini.” Yum.

As for the salmon-flavored vodka, the Alaska Distillery says it took about 48 tries to get the flavor right. The distillery’s partners say some of the earlier versions of the vodka were downright disgusting and “greasy.” The key to their newest vodka’s flavor, the partners say, is how they smoke the salmon.

From the Associated Press:

Vodka is the highest selling spirits category in the country, and in the last five or six years, flavored vodkas have been taking off, said Danielle Eddy, spokeswoman for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

Fruit flavors were first, followed by vegetables and herbs — even a Russian garlic vodka.

When’s the pastrami-flavored vodka coming?

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