There have always been high-class brandies and whiskeys, but until recently, vodka was their poor relation. Joe Breen profiles Sidney Frank,the man who made the spirit soar
Sidney Frank is not a name that will ring many bells. But this colourful American octogenarian is a key figure in the remarkable rise of vodka over the past 10 years. Frank, a drinks- industry veteran who made his mark by turning Jägermeister, an odd-tasting German liqueur, into a major drinks brand in the US, worked out in the mid-1990s that the world was ready and waiting for super-premium vodka - and willing to pay a super-premium price for it. Established brands such as Smirnoff and Absolut dominated the market, and there was no tradition of high-class vodkas, in contrast to the availability of upmarket brandy and whisky.
Frank saw the gap and went for it, thinking up the name for his brand as his crucial first step. He has told the story of how, in the summer of 1996, he came up with the name Grey Goose even before its distinctive bottles had been designed and, more importantly, before its distillery had been built.
He had a few more ideas up his sleeve. The vodka would be made in France, even though the countries most associated with vodka are in eastern and northern Europe. "People are always looking for something new," he said. "It's all about brand differentiation. If you're going to charge twice as much for a vodka, you need to give people a reason." In other words, it needs a great story.
In Frank's mind Grey Goose would be about unrivalled quality - it claims, as do many others, to be the world's best-tasting vodka. As New York magazine put it: "Its great story would hinge on the following key points: it comes from France, where all the best luxury products come from; it's not another rough-hewn Russian vodka; it's a masterpiece crafted by French vodka artisans; it uses water from pristine French springs, filtered through Champagne limestone; it's got a distinctive, carefully designed bottle with smoked glass and a silhouette of flying geese; it looks fantastic up behind the bar, the way it catches the light . . . it sure looks expensive."
And it was. In fact, when Grey Goose was launched in the US, in 1997, it was twice as expensive as Absolut, then the premium-brand leader. (The term "super-premium", however tautological, is an advertising ploy to emphasise the bang-for-buck concept.)
But the dollars rolled in, and soon the distinctive bottle was being launched in Europe, even in France, where its production had revitalised an underused distillery in Cognac. In 2003 it sold 1.4 million cases in the US, up 22 per cent on 2002, and last year, in June, Frank sold Grey Goose to Bacardi for more than €1.5 billion. (He has set his sights on a repeat performance, this time with tequila and his Corazón brand.)
Frank may have made the running in the super-premium market, but there was no shortage of competitors. The Dutch were there with Ketel One; the Poles had Chopin and Belvedere. Even unlikely countries such as New Zealand and Mexico now have their own super-premium brands with, respectively, 42 Below and Los Lobos. Established brands such as Smirnoff have hit back with lines such as Penka ("best of the best"). And in 1999, the Irish got in on the act, with Boru.
What makes the super-premium vodka market so attractive? And why, when sales of spirits are falling around the world, is vodka bucking the trend? It is partly that vodka is a drink of the age. Taken from the freezer and drunk neat, it is attractively viscous and stirring. Because it is a clear, essentially flavourless spirit, it is a perfect base for cocktails, mixing well with with orange, cola, cranberry, lemon and lime, for example, as well as with other spirits.
The absence of a distinctive taste or unique ingredient means that, although we tend to think of vodka as an eastern European drink, it has no real home, unlike, say, brandy or tequila. That means nobody is excluded from pitching for a slice of this lucrative market. And because there is a limit to what can be said about a neutral-tasting spirit - you can say only so much about Russian rye, Polish potatoes, French wheat or spring water; ditto about the number of times it is distilled - marketing departments have a free hand to think outside the bottle. Thus the brands vie with each other through lavish and eye-catching design - check out the church-window effect on bottles of Krolewska vodka, from Poland. Their websites are monuments to cool, as are their advertising campaigns.
To me, these brands are all manifestly superior in smoothness and taste, with none of the harshness or bitterness associated with more basic offerings. One of my favourite combinations is a shot of chilled vodka with a dash of cranberry juice, so I figure I've had enough to know the difference - and lived to tell the tale. If you can afford it, it's worth it.