Editor’s Note: Congratulations to Nate Windham for being honored by GO magazine’s “Best Of” issue, the Gazette’s weekly non-political entertainment magazine, as “Best Bartender” in Colorado Springs.

My publication, STEPPIN’ OUT Magazine, has had the pleasure of having Nate pen this column for the past four years and am looking forward to many more years of columns.

He is a walking, talking, alcoholic beverage encyclopedia that crafts your cocktails the way they were originally made AND preparing new recipes of his own for your pleasure. Thanks Nate…Steve Mayne, Owner / Editor SO Magazine.

As some of you may have noticed I have changed locations.  I am currently part of a new concept that has opened its first restaurant on Powers at South Carefree. 

The new location is called Palapa’s Surfside and it is a casual fine dining restaurant that specializes in fresh seafood, and the rebirth of the cocktail.  It is a Key West/Caribbean style menu with fresh fish flown in nearly every day. 

The dinner menu is very unique to Colorado Springs.  It contains a list of fresh specials which change several times a week, as well as a list of Specialties. This list consists of seafood, chicken, steak, and even a fantastic Colorado lamb dish. The food has been very successful in both presentation and taste.

 We also have a world-class pastry chef that develops the dessert menus, which change seasonally.  It is a very innovative concept and it has been a lot of fun to be a part of from the beginning.

Being in a restaurant has allowed me to develop a very innovative and unique cocktail menu that contains a list of Classics, made to the most traditional recipe available, as well as a list of Specialty drinks. These lists bring together the whole idea behind the bar at Palapa’s. 

We take into account the hundreds of years of bartending history, and all of its various recipes. We make our drinks using the freshest and finest products available to us.  The bar is stocked with some of the best spirits available, and a wide array of in-house made syrups and flavored vodkas. 

The house specialty list contains lots of unique drinks, using fresh, muddled fruit, fresh-squeezed juices, and the flavored syrups I mentioned earlier.  We try to give the guest as fine an experience with the cocktails as we do with the plates from the kitchen. 

With its ever-growing market, I decided that this month I would discuss the constantly changing spirit we know as vodka. 

Today, vodka is the number one selling spirit in the world, partially due to the fact that it is a neutral-tasting distillate, which is easily mixed.  Also, partially due to the incredible marketing that many companies have been a part. 

Namely, Absolut, with its hip, sexy ad campaign during the 1980’s and ‘90’s, which set the bar for advertising liquors.  Numerous ads in many different periodicals assured Absolut the title of ‘most recognized vodka.’  And while Absolut and several other companies battled it out as to who was THE premium vodka, no one noticed a new brand emerging. 

In the mid-1990’s Sidney Frank, owner of Sidney Frank Importing Co., recognized that the taste of American consumers did not always revolve around the true quality of a product, but that the story and look also played a huge role.  He thought that if you could give the consumer a new product, that oozed of refinement and quality, and marketed it correctly that no matter what, it could be successful. 

At the time Absolut was the industry leader for high end vodka and it sold at $17 a bottle.  Sidney decided that to take over this market, instead of undercutting the price of Absolut he would go drastically higher.  At $30 a bottle, Grey Goose opened a whole new category for vodkas. 

He distilled his vodka in France, always thought of when thinking quality, and developed a heavy, frosted glass bottle to help set his vodka apart from the others on the shelf.  Then, to really push his product, he took 1.75 liter bottles to all the hot night clubs and enrolled celebrities to advocate his new super-premium vodka. 

This marketing machine was working so well that within just a few years Grey Goose was on its way to outselling Absolut.  The final blow came when the Sex in the City girls started ordering their Cosmos with Grey Goose, and suddenly the fight was over.  Grey Goose had won and had set the bar for the super-premium category.   

This is nothing new to this category of spirits.  In the 1950’s, the owners of the Smirnoff label decided that their famous, celebrity-laced magazine ads were not working so they approached the creators of a new James Bond movie. 

They made a deal which would take the drink of the famous English spy from gin to vodka, and not just vodka, but Smirnoff vodka.  This was paired with the release of a new cocktail, the Moscow Mule, which Smirnoff promoted by including copper mugs with its bottles of vodka.  These mugs were the “traditional” vessel for the newly created Moscow Mule, which helped give the drink even more of a draw. 

These brilliant marketing methods helped boost the nearly defunct label to the number one selling vodka in a mere 30 years. 

In the 1980’s another vodka emerged and gave Smirnoff a good run for the top spot.  Absolut began an ad campaign like none that had been seen in the liquor industry. 

For over a decade Vin & Spirits, the owners of the Absolut label, bombarded American consumers with ads showing unique pictures prominently featuring the distinctively-shaped bottle.  These ads did their job and propelled a little known Swedish vodka to one of the top brands in the U.S.. 

The reason for going into all of this is to point out that the top selling vodkas in this country have one thing in common, brilliant marketing. 

These vodkas, however,  rarely rate very well according to critics, and also rarely finish very high in blind tastings.  This goes to show that well advertised products, or even wildly popular products are not always the best quality products. 

There is a lot of argument here and personal taste is often brought up, but how can you make a proper decision without all the information.  Just like anything else out there, there are numerous brands of vodka on the market, and just because one is advertised more than another is that reason enough to make it your brand of choice. 

I would encourage all of you drinkers out there to open your minds and your palates to a new vodka. 

The following is a list of vodkas that are definitely worth trying:

·         Luksusowa – $18  A Polish vodka that is made using potatoes.  One of the few potato vodkas on the market.  This is a great, inexpensive vodka.  It is one of the best buys out there.  It is my choice for vodkatinis.

·         Tito’s Handmade Vodka - $22  The first and only distillery in Texas.  This vodka is made from corn and distilled in small batches in a copper pot still.  It is very unique and is often described as the smoothest vodka out there.  Another good bargain.

·         Stoli Gold - $28  The only Russian vodka to make the list.  This may be surprising, but truthfully Russian vodka is generally a little rough for American palates, and is also not usually very high quality.  This product is distinctively different.  It is the same as the regular Stoli, except for the fact it is distilled in a copper pot still.  This helps to keep more flavor in the final distillate.  It is a very good vodka.

·         Hangar One – $31  A very unique vodka from San Francisco.  It is a blend of two different vodkas.  One is column distilled from wheat, which produces a very pure neutral spirit.  The other is a spirit made from pot distilled viognier grapes.  When the two of these are married together a very unique vodka emerges.  This vodka is very interesting as the blend creates a spirit that is very smooth, but retains a lot of flavor.

·         Jean-Marc XO - $50  Perhaps the best vodka on the market.  With a hefty price tag this one really delivers.  This French vodka is distilled nine times in an alembic still, which is a very inefficient still.  This means the congeners, which are the particles in the fermented mash that contributes to the flavor, are carried over with the distillate.  This is the most flavorful vodka on the market, so flavorful it is worth drinking neat (all by itself, at room temperature.)

·         Zubrowka - $25  This is one of the original flavored vodkas.  It is Polish and made from potatoes.  It is then flavored with a grass known as bison grass.  This grass grows in the Bialowieza Forest in eastern Poland where wild bison roam.  The grass is harvested in the summer while in full bloom and has an aroma of freshly mown hay and summer flowers.  The vodka has a delicate herbal-grassy flavor that is beautiful on the palate.

I have also included my favorite vodka recipe.  It is my version of the original Vodkatini.

The Vodkatini

·         2 oz. Vodka (any of the above will do wonders)

·         ½ oz. Lillet Blanc (a French tonic wine that matches much better with vodka than vermouth; should be stored in the refrigerator)

·         2 or 3 dashes orange flower water (can be found in liquor stores or high end culinary stores)

Stir all ingredients in a mixing glass over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Garnish with a lemon twist or two olives, rinsed with soda water.