Who is this joker and why does he have a vodka? Flavor Flav has a flavored vodka, and it happens to be Bubba Gum flavored. It took almost three months to get the label approved, and so I am enjoying a vision of William Jonathan Drayton, Jr. calling in regular and increasingly anxious status checks to TTB, and arguing about font sizes.

Le Flav joins the swelling ranks of celebrity-endorsed vodka products, alongside Voli (Fergie, Pitbull), Ciroc (Sean Combs), Aftermath (Dr. Dre) and many others.

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In the above example, it is not sufficient to have VODKA on the front label. Or, the right size. In addition, it needs to be “separate and apart” from other matter. TTB has gotten more strict about this over the years. The above rejection is from a few days ago. The vodka label is from many years ago, to show the movement in the policy, or the enforcement of the policy.

TTB is quite concerned about word placement and proximity. For example, “absinthe” must appear next to other words, as here. Vodka may not, as above. It is important to understand the various proximity rules, because they can lead to unpleasant surprises, and because they extend from spirits to beer and wine. It is probably not okay to bury the word “chardonnay” amidst a sentence singing its praises. It is probably not okay, in most instances, to affix several words before and after BEER.

The rule can be difficult because it’s not always clear how much separation is required (A few spaces? A few line breaks?). It’s not always clear why some terms get treated differently (such as “Silver Rum” or “Cream Liqueur”). It is easy enough to add an extra class/type statement to the front label, to avoid any difficulties (such as adding VODKA to the above label, on its own line) — but only if you know the rule early enough.

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It’s clearly okay to go home, add some tomato juice to your vodka, and call it a bloody mary. And it’s almost certainly a bad idea to go home and fire up your small pot still, to make just a little spirits.

Somewhere in the middle, we now have “High Proof Micro-Batch Distilled Neutral Spirit Designed for Infusing.” It comes in a 375 ml. bottle, at 160 proof. It is made by The Northern Maine Distilling Company, of Houlton, Maine. The first related approval seems to go back about one year. It mentions that the vodka is designed for “infusions, extractions, mixology, and culinary applications.” The information-packed website explains:

160 Proof?  Yikes!  Don’t freak over the proof!  The high concentration of alcohol makes Twenty 2 HPS perfect for infusing fruits, vegetables, meats, or dairy into vibrant liqueurs or flavored vodkas.  Think of the 160 Proof like a very sharp knife in your kitchen.  If you handle the knife with respect, it can perform amazing tasks.  Same with the High Proof Spirit.  It’s “sharp blade” creates infusions in hours, not weeks.

We think Northern’s COLA is interesting because we don’t know of too many other products designed for this manner of use. Also, the label underscores that TTB has no problem with strength claims on certain spirits products. This one has “High Proof” in big letters. Plenty of other labels have “Overproof.”

The site has many copyrighted recipes, such as “The Dude’s Caucasian,” inspired by Jeff Bridges and The Big Lebowski. Other eye-opening recipes include:

• Smoked Gouda Infused Vodka
• Caramelized Red Onion Infused Vodka
• Failed Recipes such as Bacon Infused Vodka (“One of the simple rules of this game, like distilling, is ‘junk in = junk out.’” “These are not soy based Bacos, but actual real bacon pieces packed with preservatives so that they don’t need to be refrigerated.  Yum?  Maybe on a salad, but not in an infusion.” “The flavor was of bacon, but not pleasant.  It just wasn’t good.”)

I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out why Twenty 2 as a brand name. I assumed it had something to do with the consumer’s age, such that, e.g., 7 Teen would not be a good choice. The answer was not evident on the company’s website but may be here:

originally, the name for the vodka was Jewell Vodka. But a company out West already had a copyright [trademark?] on that name, so it was back to the drawing board. The couple decided to get a bit more abstract. … “We talked about doing Aroostook Vodka or Katahdin Vodka, but those are so obvious. We figured, let’s pick a word that can be freely associated with anything,” said Galbiati. “Twenty 2 could be anything. It could be your address, your birthday, a sports jersey. It can mean anything to anyone. It sticks in your mind. Plus, the alliteration is nice. A Twenty 2 and tonic sounds good.”

The same Bangor Daily News article also explains, about the owners and startup:

Starting in early 2006, Galbiati and Jewell quit their jobs and began the process of starting up their business. While getting a license for a winery or brewery is, relatively speaking, not uncommon, getting the license for a distillery is a much more involved process. According to federal law, a person can brew up to 100 gallons of beer on their own, or 200 gallons if two adults are present in a household. A person also can make up to 5 gallons of wine. Any more than those amounts, and a license is needed. … A person cannot under any circumstances distill any amount of spirits without a license. It took Galbiati and Jewell about three years to get the OK to start making Twenty 2.

When I first saw the 2011 approval, I was concerned about blowing Twenty 2′s cover, before they were ready, in that the COLA is only a few days old. But they are clearly ready. Of course they have the 2010 COLA, along the same lines, and the 2011 COLA is a public record — but also, Northern has a big website with a lot of information about this idea (plus Twitter and Facebook). On this topic, I will take this opportunity to reconfirm that we have no real interest in publicizing anyone’s news, before they are ready. We make no claim to be journalists. We will be especially careful not to publicize any client news, before the client is good and ready. In the case of non-clients, we may ask, or be guided by generally available information (or the absence thereof). If, as here, the company website has a lot of the same information, it becomes difficult to ascertain what could be sensitive about the COLA.

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I would have thought John Robert McCulloch would get his keester sued off. But maybe he’s right and it’s the soda people who grabbed his brand and ran with it. The approval mentions that “Mountain Dew is the brand John McCulloch sold vodka under from 1885 until put out of business by Prohibition.” I’d wager that’s earlier than Pepsi or any of its forebearers put the lithiated green soda into commerce.

As it turns out, Wikipedia confirms that:  “The original formula (for the soda) was invented in the 1940s by two Tennessee beverage bottlers, Barney and Ally Hartman, and was first marketed in Marion, VA, Knoxville and Johnson City, Tennessee. … The Mountain Dew brand and production rights were acquired by PepsiCo in 1964, at which point its distribution expanded more widely across the United States.” The Hartmans got the name from “a colloquial term for moonshine whiskey” and got the trademark rights soon after.

The McCulloch website makes it quite clear that Mountain Dew was widely used on spirits well before the soda came along. The site also has a lot of old-fashioned spirits advertising, along with the quaint and none too subtle tagline “The Whiskey Without a Headache.”

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How quickly times and lines continue to change and move. Just two years ago, these various military-themed labels were considered by many to be tacky. In the absence of much uproar, and with plenty of military activities since then, the march of military-themed alcohol beverages continues apace.

Heroes brand vodka claims to be Veteran Owned, all American, four times distilled — and most startling — “Official Spirit of a Grateful Nation.” The brand is owned by Travis McVey, a U.S. Marine from 1989-1992. During the past few years, McVey teamed up with Lipman Brothers and Buffalo Trace (bottler):

In 2009, Heroes LLC came to fruition when Travis contacted Robert S. Lipman – a beverage alcohol industry veteran – with a business plan for introducing a hand-crafted vodka to all of the active duty military and Veterans as well as civilians throughout the United States. He anticipated the vodka being made in America with distribution to over 6,000 military bases, 6,000 VFW posts, and 12,000 American Legions posts.

When Travis presented his Heroes Vodka proposal … Lipman was intrigued. The successful entrepreneur,whose family established Lipman Brothers in 1939, has been sitting at the helm of the oldest distributor of wine and spirits in Tennessee for nearly 25 years. Hundreds of pitches pass across his desk annually, but something about this one resonated on a different level.

In a further sign of the times, it took more than nine weeks to get the label approved. In these other instances and different times, it took far less time to get other official-looking spirits labels approved:  2007 (Valor Vodka, two weeks), 2008 (44th Inauguration vodka, two weeks), 2009 (Operation Homefront Bourbon, a few days).

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It doesn’t go quite as far as Roth Vodka, which mentions something like a vintage date. But in some ways, Napa Vodka goes further — because it refers to the specific grape varietal and the vaunted Napa origin — rather than just California more generally.

Wines & Vines explains:

The vodka was made from 2008 grapes harvested from a single vineyard in Napa Valley and fermented into wine, then distilled in a Vendome copper pot still at Stillwater Spirits in Petaluma, Calif. … It takes nearly 2 tons of grapes to produce the 3,000 gallons of wine needed to make 300 gallons of high-proof spirits, which are then diluted to 500 gallons. … While there appears to be no legal requirement, [owner Arthur] Hartunian secured approval from the Napa Valley Vintners and Napa Valley Grapegrowers for his project.

It sells for about $75 per bottle, and the Napa, California distillery produced only about 2,600 bottles.

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I bet more than 95% of vodka (consumed in the US) is distilled from grain. After all, the big ones like Stolichnaya, Absolut, Smirnoff, and Grey Goose all seem to be distilled from grain. Here is a notable exception, however. This vodka, made by Island Distillers, of Honolulu, Hawaii, is distilled from sugar cane. Another exception, cutting against the grain, is Glacier vodka, distilled from potatoes.

Does the commodity matter much? After all, vodka is supposed to be “neutral.” The rule says: “‘Vodka’ is neutral spirits so distilled, or so treated after distillation with charcoal or other materials, as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color.”

It is amazing that the regulations insist upon fastidious disclosure as to the commodity from which distilled when it’s not clear that it has any impact on the taste or quality. Possibly, it’s crucial to put it on the label because it’s not otherwise discernible. In any event, there is probably no doubt that it costs many times more to make neutral spirits from cane, potatoes or just about anything else compared to a tanker full of grain neutral spirits.

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We bring you this vodka for several reasons. According to the label it is “fair trade certified” and “sustainable.” But mostly because it highlights quinoa. The back label bills quinoa as “the mother of all grains, a superfood long worshipped by the Inca people. …”

Lo and behold, quinoa does in fact pop up at number five on WebMD’s list of top ten “superfoods.” Near yogurt, eggs, nuts, kiwi, and other leading superfoods, quinoa is described as:

one of the best whole grains you can eat. … “It is an ancient grain, easy to make, interesting, high in protein (8 grams in 1 cup cooked), fiber (5 grams per cup) and a naturally good source of iron,”… Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) also has plenty of zinc, vitamin E, and selenium to help control your weight and lower your risk for heart disease and diabetes. …

So far we see one other vodka distilled largely from quinoa, but very little in the way of quinoa beer, other than this one.

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This, quite apparently, is what Charlie Sheen has been drinking. It is Tiger Blood Vodka, made in Hungary. No word on whether it’s the source of the Adonis DNA. The evidence is here.

Fox says the real Tiger Blood is something along the lines of mangosteen — a fruit we covered about a year ago.

Editor’s Note:  nothing in this post should be regarded as curative, therapeutic, advisable or serious.

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Distinctive container? Box 18c of this approval says it is.

Kodiak Imports, of San Diego, California, has several TTB approvals for spirits products packed in containers that look quite a bit like fire extinguishers. If you stop and think about it, the brand name doesn’t exactly suggest that it puts out fires, and the back label points out that “This is not a fire extinguisher.” Then again, it does look a lot like exactly that. The website says “The multi award winning packaging looks like a fire extinguisher, complete with a locking pin, lever, and a nozzle through which Firestarter Vodka is poured.” Thank goodness it’s only 80 proof.

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