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The Little Water of Life
By Paul Richardson and Mikhail Ivanov
Page 2
of 8
The Russian Drink
Many nations of the
world have a singular drink that they have come to be identified
with and that has come to be identified with them. For the French it
is wine; the British and Germans have beer; the Japanese have sake;
the Norwegians have aquavit. And, for Russians (and Poles,
Belarusans, Finns and Ukrainians), it is vodka.
Perhaps no other spirit would have been so compatible with the Russian soul. The subtle lithesomeness of wine, best taken in the open air with fine cheese and warm bread, is a bad fit with Russia's long winters and short growing seasons. While beer has enjoyed popularity in Russia through the ages (and has seen a recent growth in popularity, see Russian Life, October 1997), it is simply not a "serious enough" drink. It does not pack enough punch to unleash true feelings and passions.
But vodka, so pure and purposeful, so ideal for warming the despondent soul in February or for cooling passions in August, is a feast or famine sort of drink. One would expect something like vodka to arise from a Northern culture with a communal peasantry, where long winters and tortuously short growing seasons meant back-breaking labor intermitted only by community-building social feasts and drinking bouts. What is more, the unique ability of vodka (unlike wine or beer or even mead) to act as an accompaniment to any manner of feast or food (whatever is on hand), plus the fact that it can be distilled from any type of grain or organic matter (again, whatever is on hand), makes it all the more welcome. And, when it was discovered that the best vodka resulted from filtering with birch charcoal (not oak or pine, but birch, the tree of the Russian taiga), well, what more need be said?
(continued ...)
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