Absolut Vodka - Ethos & Execution

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Portrait of a Bottle - Andy Warhol - 1985

In today’s cocktail scene, vodka has a bad rap.  Vodka is often joked about amongst bartenders for “paying the bills”, and is not even served in some cocktail bars.  Despite what the naysayers say, Vodka is the backbone of the spirits industry, dominating over a third of the sales in 2013 (DISCUS).

Gastronomista Featured in Company Magazine!

Exciting News!  Yours truly is featured in this week's Company Weekly Edit for Company Magazine based in the UK! I was asked to contribute some of my favorite tipples, favorite drinking spots, and style tips for busy ladies on the go.

 The piece is part of Company Magazine's weekly app that has style tips, celebrity instagrams, street style, and beauty tips and products!  It's a really fun concept - a little magazine on your phone!!!  

iphone users can download the app for 99 cents here. 

Not an iphone user?  Fret not, we've got screen shots below:

Many thanks to Company Magazine!!!

xx emma

Stockholm: Absolut Art

We last left you upon our departure from the epic and wintery Ice Hotel in Kiruna, Sweden.  Next stop, Stockholm, to get a glimpse at the art and design behind Absolut.

We landed in Stockholm very very grubby from our icy retreat, and suddenly found ourselves in the incredibly stylish and hip art hotel The Lydmar Hotel.  Beautiful people filled the lobby, enjoying apertifs and the lovely afternoon.

Springtime in Sweden

Above the Arctic Circle - The Ice Hotel

We've heard you're bored with normal hotels.  Sick of those soft beds with extremely high linen counts, and you want something more...exotic.  You could head to the woods, you could take to a hammock on the beach, or you could land yourself in a gigantic igloo and be the happiest camper around.

I'm already one for the cold - a lover of snow, ice, and all things snow sports, so sleeping in an igloo was something I've always wanted to do.  Lucky for me, I was headed to the most epic igloo of them all, The Ice Hotel, in Kiruna, Sweden.

Ice Hotel Grand Hall

Gratuitous Plane Shot

We landed in Kiruna midday and were immediately led to a tent where we were given full snow suits: pants, jackets, boots, balaclavas, you name it, we had it.  (I had my own personal mittens I purchased earlier in the year, Eskimo inspired mittens with the Colorado flag beaded upon them).

Selfie, In Fur

And how would we get to the Ice Hotel you ask?  Why, by dog sled, of course...

The Mightiest of Beasts

Absolut Elyx Vodka - Behind the Scenes

Welcome back for our next chapter in the behind the scenes tour of Absolut Vodka!  Today we would like to share with you a preview of their newest release, Absolut Elyx, a premier vodka brand.

You may have already heard of it, it was released in 2011 in select countries in Europe, and it has been doing very well in the Travel Retail market (read, Duty Free).  So for those booze hounds out there, it's a good reason to always pack light and check out Duty Free on your way home - limited edition bottles, preview releases, etc,  many companies use Duty Free as a test market!

So what exactly is Absolut Elyx?  It's a highly refined vodka that is distilled in copper stills, and is made from winter wheat harvested from the Råbelöf Estate, giving it a particular flavor profile (very a similar concept to terroir of wine).  The scale of the production of Elyx is significantly less than Absolut, and it retains a hand crafted ethos from the special estate wheat, to the local water filtered through a limestone bedrock, to the bottle itself.    

We started off the day touring the Råbelöf Estate and seeing the wheat fields.   The estate is dates back to 1408, and all of the wheat used in Absolut Elyx comes from these farms, which is in an optimal location for growing the winter wheat used in vodka.  

Råbelövsjön Lake

Sister Chopper

Absolut Vodka - Distillery Tour

A few weeks back, I hopped on a plane to visit the Absolut Vodka facilities in Sweden.  I had been very much looking forward to this trip being that I'm a big fan of all things spirits, but honestly didn't know too much about vodka (embarrassing, I know).  Suddenly, I had an opportunity to learn more about vodka behind the scenes at not only one of the world's largest alcohol companies, but a company that has a larger mission towards quality, sustainability, and design.

I flew into Copenhagen, and although I had been told that I must seek out one of their famous hotdogs, it would have to wait.  We were off to Kristianstad - about an hour and a half South East of Copenhagen.