“There’s a lot written about fantastic wines, and scotches, and tequilas, and rums, and never very a lot about vodkas,” says Tad Dorda, founder and CEO of Poland’s Chopin Vodka. “Why don’t we begin speaking concerning the greatest distilled spirit on the planet?”
The method of creating vodka begins, after all, with the common-or-garden potato. Potato farmer Marek Wierzejski and his household’s farm have been promoting potatoes to Chopin for over three a long time. The potatoes are planted throughout 4 hectares of land within the spring and harvested within the fall. Inside three days of being dropped at Chopin’s distillery, the potatoes are distilled. Roughly seven kilos of potatoes goes into each bottle of vodka.
Chopin’s grasp distiller Waldemar Durakiewicz is aware of each step of the distilling course of, from steaming the potatoes to what their very best temperature is earlier than including enzymes and yeast. “Waldemar is a captivating particular person,” Dorda says. Distilling “was his first job when he completed school, and he’s not trying in the direction of retirement.” After the yeast and is added and all the pieces is mixed, the potatoes are moved to fermentation tanks, the place alcohol is produced. From the tanks, the vodka is distilled — the processing which the alcohol is separated from the potato mash — in a big column. The leftover potatoes are collected by farmers who then use the meals waste to feed their animals. “The opposite necessary facet is that it’s a sustainable manufacturing,” Dorda says. “It’s at all times been this fashion — a minimum of on this area.”
Watch the most recent episode of Distributors to learn the way Chopin Vodka creates its sustainable product as a household.