Looking for Żubrówka Vodka
"It smells of freshly mown hay and spring flowers, of thyme and lavender, and it's soft on the palate and so comfortable, it's like listening to music by moonlight."
Hey!
I have good news and bad news. Bad news is at the end, along with some Cliff’s notes for today’s episode about Żubrówka.
When I was first introduced to Żubrówka vodka at 12, my uncle told me that it has its specific herbaceous flavour and yellow colour because the Bison peed on the grass that was in the bottle. More responsible adults told me that it was just flavoured like grass, and there was no pee.
Only later I found out it’s made by pushing unflavoured vodka gets through bales of dried bison grass, and then a single blade of grass is added for aesthetic reasons. So, I’d guess that my uncle was right a little bit right.
A quick digression into flavoured things
I’ve never really been into artificially flavoured things. A thing that is made to taste like a thing it is not meant to be has always felt bad to me.
Anything grape flavored that isn’t an actual grape may as well be inedible. I’ve even said I’d rather drink pee than a Zero Sugar Ultra Watermelon Monster Energy drink. I’d rather drink neither, but gun to my head, I stand by it.
An artificially flavoured thing always has had two flavours:
Whatever the fake flavour is
The fakeness
Does that make sense? It tastes sort of like how I imagine the spirit of plastic — something that feels profoundly unnatural to consume.
I know this is not a popular opinion (Skittles, Starbucks, “blue raspberry”, and energy drinks would not enjoy their success if it was), but I am a princess and artificial flavouring is the pea under my mattress.
The Żubrówka hay bale flavour
Vodka alone is famously ‘unflavoured’ — it tastes like petrol, or like smooth petrol when you spend a little more on it.
Because vodka is so unflavoured, when you have something that tastes like vanilla, or strawberry, or blue raspberry, all you taste is the fake flavour. 🤮!
This is why Żubrówka vodka is supreme. I believe this is because it’s the only naturally flavoured vodka I’ve come across.
It’s also a recipe that seems to have been around since the 16th century. Like butter, bread, and salt-brined pickles, only a of phenomenal sort of flavour will endure the test of centuries. Blue raspberry has been around for what, like 20 years tops.
This is one of the few vodkas that has a taste that matches the petrol energy of vodka. It’s herbaceous, a little lavendery, grassy. Mixed with with cloudy apple juice, perfected.
Tracking an endangered species
A few weeks back we ran out of Żubrówka vodka and so I got in the Jimny over to Dan’s to get another bottle. It was not there.
I went to a BWS to find it. Again, not there. Online I go, to find that no major bottle shop has Żubrówka in stock anywhere around Australia.
So I made my way down each website listed on a “zubrowka bison grass vodka australia” Google search results page, trying to find out where in Australia was stocking Żubrówka. Nine pages in, and nothing.
Finally, one website seemed to have stock. At 10 am on a Sunday, convinced this might be my last chance, I ordered two bottles.
The next day, an email:
Was the Żubrówka I’d enjoyed with peach juice last week the last I’d ever have? I emailed the shop:
“Unsure at the moment” was not a good omen. So I went back to what I do best: spend a disproportionate amount of time and money finding a thing I really want.
Here is the result of time and money spent:
A few days later I got an email saying it had been delivered. It hadn’t. I feared that I’d lost out again, this time through a Kogan scam.
That was last week. Since then, I’ve (temporarily) left the country and abandoned hope for having it until I went to Poland. But on Thursday: a message from home.
The bad news
Is that you’ve spent all this time reading about how this is the best spirit you’ve never had and it’s nearly to find in Australia. I’m sorry.
Żubrówka Cliff’s notes
Somerset Maugham, the famous British playwright and novelist, said Żubrówka "smells of freshly mown hay and spring flowers, of thyme and lavender, and it's soft on the palate and so comfortable, it's like listening to music by moonlight." this is a much more poetic and apt way of explaining it than I could have ever attempted.
The perfect way to drink it is with cloudy apple juice.
It is cheaper and better than more expensive “higher quality” vodkas
, unless you are desperately seeking the last bottle in Australia.Pronounce it “zoo-brov-ka”.
If you see it, please tell me immediately <3
Ok, bye! See you both (reader and Żubrówka) in about a fortnight.