But what about vodka? Not a spirit that is so enthusiastically spoken about as a standalone, yet remains a solid staple in cocktails. Enter X MUSE vodka (pronounced tenth muse) - here to challenge this at the premium end of the market. X MUSE has been created with quality and culture in mind and hails from somewhere not necessarily associated with the spirit. You may be thinking of Eastern Europe, particularly Russia, but this vodka is made in Scotland, yes, famous for spirits, but of the Whisky kind.
Taking three years to develop, X MUSE uses water from an ancient aquifer, producing exceptionally pure water, taken from the 100 acre Bennington Estate near Edinburgh amongst a sculptured landscape called Jupiter Artland. (Look at the site and you can see the bottle design influence.)
Photo © Graeme Yuill (cc-by-sa/2.)
And it’s all steeped in art. If you know your Greek mythology, you recall the Nine named Muses who represented the arts. The Tenth Muse had no name and “represents all that is unseen, not captured, defined or understood.” You’ll cleverly find the brand strap line under the waxed bottle top: ‘Plura Latent, Quam Patent’ (more is hidden than revealed). Nice touch.
It’s all rather beautiful, the bottle is stunning sculptural piece that plays with the light, the white wax and textured paper label all exude that feeling that this is not your average bottle of voddy. I doff my hat to the design and marketing teams involved, the brand story is exquisite. You can read more on their website.
But to the taste Fran! X MUSE is the first barley blended vodka, inspired by the Whiskey traditions of Scotland. Two heritage varieties of barley are used; Plumage Archer and Maris Otter, prized for flavour, distilled separately and combined to produced this luxurious, rich, smooth vodka. It’s one of the very few vodkas I would drink neat, and is surprisingly characterful/complex.
Taste profile: Citrus, apple, cereal and pepper.
As for a cocktail at home, I didn’t want to diffuse this vodka too much so chose to make a Caipiroska , similar to a caipirinha, but prepared with vodka instead of cachaça.
Ingredients
• 50ml Vodka
• 2 tsp Sugar
• 1 Lime
• 1/2 glassful Crushed Ice
Preparation
1 Cut the lime into wedges and place into shaker.
2 Use a muddler to mix the lime and sugar, not squashing too much or else will become bitter.
3 Add crushed ice and vodka and shake well.
4 Pour shaker contents into serving glass and garnish with a lime wedge.
5 Garnish with a lime wedge.
You can also see it used in some of these delicious sounding cocktails on their website.
Priced at £60 per 70cl bottle.
AD I was sent a bottle for review, words and thought my own.
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