In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Eric Felten wrote on the difficulties that vodka makers are having trying to dfferentiate their brands (since they all pretty taste the same) and brought up a blast from the past (sub req):
For vodka sellers, these are the best of times, in that sales of high-priced vodkas continue to grow. And they are the worst, too, in that just about anyone can -- and is -- getting into the vodka marketing game. "Go into a liquor store or a bar, and there are 20 vodkas on the shelf," says Vic Morrison, marketing veep at McCormick Distilling. The challenge is to come up with some clever gimmick to set one's vodka apart.
The salesman who thinks he can crack the market with claims of superior taste will be sorely disappointed: I went to a vodka tasting hosted by the head of a prominent luxury liquor house. It was an exercise meant to dispel the notion that the differences among vodkas are illusory. But after being walked through the vodkas on the table with elaborate descriptions of the characteristics of each, I found myself hard-pressed to discern much difference. So I asked the executive to demonstrate the differences by tasting the vodkas blind. He couldn't even identify his own flagship brand.
McCormick Vodka is now in the high-end game? When I was in college, McKormick was our rot-gut vodka of choice along with the likes of Kamchatka, Siberian Ice, Popov and other bargain basement brands that had Russian sounding names despite being distilled in Cold Spring, MN.
McCormick used to run $4.99 for a liter and when dilluted with a little Sunny Delight was a cheap, effective way to get mind-numbingly drunk (and suffer some of the worst hangovers imaginable the next day). We even had an anole lizard that we named after our favorite vodka. He was a great pet, whose life was tragically cut short after a close encounter with a sparkler. RIP McCormick.
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