We’ve had a string of bad reviews lately, and it feels like we buried the lead sometimes. Hard pass on this vodka y’all. Anyway with that out of the way the review must go on – this is a small batch Vermont vodka, and while we’d love to sing the praises of people in the Northeast of the USA doing good honest work – they bloviate and fail to produce something of true quality and instead make something okay that costs too damn much.
Did we say okay? By okay we meant awful, and outside of a single cocktail we failed to find anything positive out of this experience, and instead found only negative aspects. It doesn’t taste great, it burns, it’s bullshit, and you pay handsomely for it given the caliber of quality it brings.
What they Say: “Hand bottled by Smuggler’ Notch Distillery, Jeffersonville, Vermont
The alchemy of a father/son dream brings you Smugglers’ Notch Vodka, a small batch blend of winter wheat, corn and Vermont spring water. Our processing with these ingredients creates an award-winning Mountain Spirit with unparalleled purity that can be described as smooth, crisp, clean and subtly sweet. Smugglers’ Notch Vodka has earned a rating of 95 points – the highest-rated domestic vodka by the Wine Enthusiast®, awarded a unanimous Double Gold Medal in the San Franciso World Spirits Competition and exclaimed exceptional by the Beverage Testing Institute. Enjoy and please drink responsibly.”
Taste: 4.5 – When starting you get a fair amount of grain-like flavor and some sweetness, but it’s not great partly because it starts here and leads into…
Aftertaste: 2.0 – A pretty poor and ethanol/charcoal aftertaste. It’s not going to rip the paint of your house, but it’s not friendly going down – and that’s taste-wise.
Burn/Smooth: 2.0 – Their literature says this is smooth – we say it’s only smooth after about the 6th sip having burnt any feeling in your mouth off, and even then there’s some winging.
Aroma: 3.0 – It certainly smells like something smuggled, but more in the back of a van amongst floor cleaner. While you do need to dig in to really get the aroma, that (ethanol) is all you get.
Honesty: 0.5 – Their text is some bull. [Oxford Comma Catawampus Interlude] But the sheer audacity at calling this smooth and crisp coupled with half the text being some high-tier wank from (checks notes) Wine Enthusiast® for vodka? In short, we want to make 2 things clear. A. If you put any shit we say on a bottle, your score goes down just because – fuck you. B. If you are pulling an ‘exceptional’ outta the Beverage Testing Institute for your text about your vodka you clearly only want to say buy me, so at least just say that instead of some bullshit. The 0.5 is purely for the nice B&W image of Vermont, a nice place to look at/be in.
Mixability: 5.5
Russian: 6.5 – It’s certainly the best of the three adding that bit of sweet and grain to the flavor, with no offness.
Vodka Tonic: 5.5 – Well you get pretty much no flavor here, none bad – but also none good. Might be useful for some folks (read: drunks and those who can’t deal with booze)
Screwdriver: 4.5 – You can actually discern it slightly here, but not in any way that’s relevant – it is simply an average sort of screwdriver.
Value: 0.5 – Now we come to the real bug of the bear, the real turd in the eye – the price. Some of you may know of a small batch vodka from Maine that was also this pricey (this is more), but that had the virtue of being – FUCKEN GOOD. It’s Twenty 2 vodka btw. So the score here for this? Shite.
Google Shop Average: $29
Website: https://www.smugglersnotchdistillery.com/
Reviewer Scores:
BuffaloJern: 1.0
Want to compare this spirit against our archives? Visit our statistics page.
Metric Score: 18/70 |+| Metric Average: 2.57 |+| Reviewer Average: 1.0
New to Honest Booze Reviews, or just wondering how we score? See our FAQ/Review Policy.
Final Thoughts: There are certainly worse vodkas out there and in reviews on our site. There vodkas that taste so much worse or burn like hell. Some of those even lack the bright spot on the peach as this does, but when you can barely muster a single point in Honesty and Value combined – well that’s a personal new low.
