This post was sponsored by Absolut Vodka.

Study a bottle of Absolut Vodka. Sleek and elegant, its shape is now iconic, but was once revelatory. Study the contents and you’ll immediately note that the liquid inside is impeccably pure and clear.

None of this happened by accident, but rather is the product of meticulous Swedish craftsmanship and design. Absolut may be a multinational company producing millions of bottles of vodka to be enjoyed all around the world. But they’re still doing things the right way.

In the town of Ähus, Sweden, a 400-year-old village with cobblestone streets, they’ve been making vodka for the better half of a millennium. This is where Absolut vodka is made. All of the Absolut vodka. Each and every one of the 650,000 bottles produced every day is made in this community.

Absolut is made exclusively from winter wheat grown in the Skane region of Sweden. The vodka used is from the local aquifers, which are noted for their clarity. Even so, the distillers take the extra step of filtering the water to ensure that it is as pure as possible

All of this allows the company to produce a product that is of consistently and reliably high quality. No matter where you purchase a bottle of Absolut vodka, you can be sure that you’re going to get what you expect.

In the glass, Absolut is transparent, with no color or sediment obscuring it. It looks like the purest glass of water you’ve ever seen. Its aroma is one of cereal grains and faint ethanol, with none of the whiffs of acetone that mar poor quality vodka.

In the mouth, it has a slight sweetness to start, with little fire to announce its arrival. There is again the hint of cereal grains and vanilla, but the flavor is subtle. Spirits reviewers hate the term “smooth” because it’s so nebulous. But it is the word I keep thinking of. As the vodka moves around your mouth, it gradually heats up and dries out, leaving a slight bitterness and pleasant tingling on the tongue.

At the risk of sounding like a cliché, the proof is in the bottle. Some in the spirits world look down their noses at vodka, as if it doesn’t take a craftsman’s skill to make a spirit this fine. But it does, and the distillers at Absolut have that skill.

Absolut Vodka paid a fee for this post’s inclusion here on Professor Cocktail, but in no way did they dictate or control the content. The thoughts expressed here, and the words chosen to express them, are strictly and completely our own.