Welcome To The Vodka Renaissance...
After almost 10 years creating award-winning gins, we're proud to introduce our brand new portfolio of British-made potato-based vodkas.
In 2020 when the world was in the early grip of the pandemic, we were called to arms to create 40,000 units of hand sanitiser for the Metropolitan Police however along with toilet roll and sourdough starters, English wheat spirit, the foundation for our gins, was drastically low on the ground.
Undeterred, we searched high and low and eventually discovered a supplier of exceptional quality English spirit distilled from potatoes. Truth be told it was something of a travesty to be using such a high quality alcohol for hand sanitiser, so our Founder Ged, Master Distiller Jake and Brand Director Tom vowed to revisit this ingredient when life came a little bit more normal again, and use it to create something altogether more befitting of its quality - and so Portobello Road Vodka was born.
The range, consisting of a Potato Vodka, a Golden Madagascan Vanilla Vodka, a Calabrian Bergamot Citrus Vodka and a Toasted Coffee Bean Vodka
With a focus on all natural, quality ingredients, each vodka has been distilled to deliver exceptional and multi-faceted flavours for mixed drinks. Our team have taken exceptional care in sourcing the flavours for these spirits to ensure they deliver the most authentic flavours for premium cocktails. However in the process of distilling the spirits, Ged, Jake and the team quickly realised that while the potato spirit is the canvas upon which our vodkas are created, it is not an altogether blank canvas. The base spirit itself provides us with oodles of flavour and nuance, while its seductive weight in the mouth makes it a perfect catalyst to deliver the 100% natural flavours that we add.
We wanted to make sure that we maximised the character imparted by the spirit alone, so as most vodkas do, we started by putting the spirit through a continuous distillation process, which gets it to a very high level of purity. But here's where things get a little more interesting; after its initial distillation, we then distill it once more, the old fashioned way, in one of our copper pot stills. But that’s not all, in the still along with the spirit, we include some sacrificial copper.
The use of copper in distilling is by no means a unique activity. In fact, one of the reasons that pot stills are made from copper is because of the chemical properties of the metal help to neutralise and remove sulphur compounds and impurities from spirits, via copper catalysation. The more exposure to copper, the more of the less pleasant tasting compounds we remove, while leaving behind plenty of flavour and character
This is why we add additional copper to the still for distillation, with the aim to create as much contact as possible between the spirit and the purifying copper - the incremental copper is known as sacrificial as each piece is only used in one distillation. The resulting spirit is a radically distinctive tasting vodka, with a seductive weight in the mouth which makes it the perfect catalyst to deliver the 100% natural flavours that we add after distillation.
To find out more and try our vodkas, click here.