Jak będzie po polsku "cingu lingu"?

[muckefuck]

Those who know my drinking habits know that, in general, I'm not much for vodka. This probably has something to do with the fact that I first encountred it in college, when no one could afford really good vodka. So my mates tended to place a premium on smoothness, i.e. lack of character, and would mask the unpleasant burn of lesser distillations with strong flavours such as fruit jello or Kahlua.

So I probably never would've developed a taste for the stuff at all if Nuphy hadn't introduced me to Okhotnichya, a.k.a "hunter's vodka". This is a traditional flavoured vodka which is steeped with mountain herbs and sweetened with honey, but for all that you'd never mistake it for any monastic herbal liqueur; it still tastes very much like vodka. This was right before the market for flavoured vodka really exploded in this country, a development which paradoxically pushed Okhotnichya off the shelves to make room for concoctions with everything from vanilla to watermelon. Around this time, a Polish co-worker told me about Żubrówka, which takes its name from a Polish word for its chief aromatic, buffalo grass (Hierochloe odorata). I was intrigued, but since the FDA had banned true Żubrówka due to the presence of coumarin, I couldn't get my hands on the real stuff.

Flash forward to last Christmas, when lhn handed me a bottle of buffalo grass vodka. I didn't even realise until looking at the label to write this entry that it's not actually Polish, but a Lithuanian brand (Stumbras, from the Lithuanian name for the same plant, stumbražolė). I joyfully hoisted it home, put it in the liquor cabinet, and basically ignored it for half a year until my eyes fell on it last night and I resolved to give it a try this afternoon, when I would have plenty of time for the alcohol to work its way out before bedtime.

It has--as one might expect--a pleasant grassy scent and I initially decided to give it my usual treatment for new-fangled flavoured vodkas, i.e. tall with tonic. But the subtle taste was completely overwhelmed by quinine, so I followed this up with a shot of it room temperature and neat. Verdict: I could get used to it. It's neither as sweet nor as herbal as the Okhotnichya, but burns a little less. Certainly, it's more interesting than straight Stoli or Absolute.

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[thedeli.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that if you ask them, many Russians will insist that they invented Zubrowka. Along with polyphonic choral music and the steam engine.