Vodka

Today, vodka is an important element in Polish national identity. The distillation of wine was known to a small number of Polish physicians and scholars by the end of the 13th century, but widespread popularity of distillates as beverages did not come earlier than the end of the 16th century. Grain vodkas, in particular rye vodkas, have been an important part of Polish culture since at least the early 17th century. Polish potato vodkas arose in the late 18th century and dominated production in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but then fell to minimal levels.

Aims: To explain comprehensively variations in adult male mortality rate in Europe, and in particular,
high mortality in some East European countries with particular focus on specific patterns of
alcohol consumption.
Short summary: Per capita distilled spirits consumption is found to be the strongest determinant
of the adult male mortality rate in Europe as soon as the unrecorded alcohol consumption is taken
into account. It turns out to be much stronger than the other tested significant determinants such
as per capita health expenditures, smoking prevalence, consumption of hard drugs and per capita
consumption of vegetables and fruit.
Methods: Ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression with adult male mortality rate as a
dependent variable, and various indicators of alcohol and drug consumption as well as logarithm
of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, logarithm of total per capita health expenditures, latitude
(climatic factors), per capita fruit and vegetable consumption, smoking prevalence as independent
factors.
Results: Per capita distilled spirits consumption turns out to be the strongest determinant of the
adult male mortality rate in Europe as soon as the unrecorded alcohol consumption is taken into
account. It turns out to be much stronger than the other tested significant determinants of the
adult male mortality rate such as per capita health expenditures, smoking prevalence, consumption
of hard drugs and per capita consumption of vegetables and fruit. Still, higher per capita wine
consumption has turned out to be a marginally significant determinant of the higher adult male
mortality rate in some tests. Latitude, beer and soft drug consumption have turned out insignificant
in this study.
Conclusions: Spirits consumption is a major risk factor of adult male mortality, with significantly
greater impact compared to beer and wine. Therefore, reduction in distilled spirits consumption in
hard liquor drinking areas should be a major target in health policy.

Conductivity measurement is introduced as a rapid, simple and cheap way to identify counterfeit vodka. It was found that the conductivity of vodka derives exclusively from its content of inorganic anions which were previously suggested as markers for vodka authenticity using ion chromatographic determination. The conductivity of vodka is very stable
between different batches of bottle filling of the same
brand, but there are large differences between different
brands. Especially discount brands have significantly
higher conductivities than premium products. The applicability of conductivity measurement was demonstrated
in authentic forensic cases of brand fraud. A large advantage above other methods of authentication is the possibility to conduct conductivity measurements with mobile meters directly in gastronomy.

The objective of this study was to determine the potential of using near infrared (NIR) transmission spectroscopy to build calibration models for the quantitative characterisation and qualitative discrimination of Russian and non-Russian (foreign) vodkas. The results of partial least squares models based on the NIR spectra of 109 vodka samples showed that the major constituent alcoholic strength [root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) 0.25% vol] and the physical parameter relative density (RMSEP 0.0003) could be successfully determined quantitatively. The method failed, however, in quantifying certain minor components such as anions, cations and sugars. For qualitative discrimination, soft independent modelling of class analogy analysis (SIMCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) were applied to the sample set containing both the Russian and the foreign vodkas. Despite the correct assignment of unknown test samples to the respective vodka species, both modelling approaches, however, did not prove reliable enough for unambiguous authentication purposes.

While in Europe vodka is mainly derived from potatoes or cereals, a large proportion of Brazilian vodka is likely obtained from sugarcane, which contains ethyl carbamate (EC) precursors. EC, in addition to several other contaminants and congeners, were investigated in 32 samples of Brazilian vodka. All samples complied with the Brazilian regulations for congeners and contaminants, having EC content below 0.01 mg/L (detection limit). These results are probably related to the processing of vodka, in particular the use of extractive and rectifying stainless steel distillation columns, which allow the production of high strength spirits with low levels of congeners and contaminants.