Is Craft Vodka Ready for Its Moment?

About 15 years ago, the nascent craft spirits industry was awash in vodka. Distillers just getting started needed ready cash flow, and the unaged neutral spirit — America’s top-selling category — gave them something to offer consumers while their whiskey matured. Plus it was easy to produce. Often, distillers were just bottling bulk grain neutral spirit (GNS).

A few distillers did make vodka from whole ingredients, including West Virginia’s Smooth Ambler, which used the same mash bill as its wheated bourbon. “We were doing it from grain to glass,” says founder John Little. “Vodka usually sells because it’s well priced or well marketed and ours was neither.”

But, Little says, the vodka was “an afterthought”; whiskey was always the focus. Smooth Ambler phased out its vodka in 2015 as its whiskey business began taking off, and many distilleries followed the same pattern. Once ubiquitous, craft vodka soon gave way to whiskey.

“It’s a good indication of how seriously people were taking craft vodka,” says Caley Shoemaker, the longtime master distiller of Hangar 1 Vodka and founder of As Above So Below Distillery in Santa Fe, N.M., which makes Ritual Vodka. Craft distillers were content to let it disappear without a second glance.

But vodka is still the best-selling spirit in the United States. And while consumer interest in whiskey and tequila has eclipsed much of its activity, that doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting things happening in craft vodka or distillers who see opportunity in the clear spirit. In fact, this might just be its most vibrant moment yet.

Ticking All the Craft Boxes

Part of craft vodka’s current dynamism comes thanks to a change in the law. Until 2020, vodka was legally required to be “without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color” by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, but that language has since been dropped from the regulations. Vodka is still defined as a “neutral spirit” but there seems to be a more encompassing attitude developing among both distillers and consumers. “A vodka of character can fit into that profile,” says Lucas Huff, global director of advocacy at Nevada’s Minden Mill Distillery, which makes High Ground Vodka.

The updated definition has opened the door for vodkas to showcase their base ingredients as never before. Weber Ranch, a Texas-based brand founded by Round 2 Spirits, a group of ex-Patrón leaders, is made with 100 percent blue agave and highlights what president and COO Lee Applbaum calls the “bright citrus, tropical fruit, green apple that you get from the sweetness of the agave.” High Ground features a base of 100 percent rye that was grown on Minden Mill’s farm, which Huff says has “an Old World characteristic, more viscous and oily.”

Flavorful, high-quality vodka can catch some consumers off guard, though, which Shoemaker attributes to a “mismatch of expectations.” That goes beyond sensory characteristics and includes the spirit’s common positioning as a tasteless mixer. “Americans don’t see vodka as a spirit category where connoisseurship is possible or makes sense,” Shoemaker adds. Still, distillers see consumer willingness to try something different.

Educating about ingredients and processes helps. Vermont’s Barr Hill Spirits makes its vodka from 100 percent local honey, whose flavors vary from season to season, but which always gives the spirit a lush richness. “A lot of people are unaccustomed to so much character in a vodka and so they have to reset their definition,” says marketing director Leigh Samuels.

That moment of reset helps Barr Hill staff explain not only how the vodka gets its unique flavor, but also how it plays into the distillery’s wider mission of supporting local apiaries and regenerative agriculture. “It’s an opportunity to show that vodka is truly an agricultural product and has been for hundreds of years, but most people don’t tend to look at it from that angle,” adds Patrick Amice, Barr Hill’s general manager of hospitality operations.

 “Intentionally creating a vodka with a sense of place can have a lot of power. There’s opportunity for regionality.”

Such transparency is valued by consumers who have been primed to expect it from other craft spirits, and distillers that embrace it are rewarded. Barr Hill has seen a positive response to its vodka, which is priced on the high end at about $70, in markets with strong cocktail culture and consumer curiosity about ingredients and process.

“Craft vodka is the hardest spirit to distill,” Shoemaker says. “There’s nowhere to hide.” Ritual blends 100 percent barley spirit with wheat-based neutral spirit, a combination that yields a flavorful, textured vodka at a competitive price. Shoemaker says that since its launch in late 2021, Ritual has found a niche as the house vodka at a variety of Santa Fe venues. She anticipates additional growth as the product recently expanded into Colorado and Texas, as well as launching direct-to-consumer sales.

On top of that, craft producers are playing up the spirit’s purity, touting their use of nothing but water, yeast, and the base ingredients. Some are also emphasizing an absence of additives. With its focus on tequila drinkers, this has been especially important for Weber Ranch; the brand is certified additive-free by the Additive-Free Alliance. “It’s a level of scrutiny and transparency that the consumer is owed,” Applbaum says.

Transparency about process and people plays into this, too. Huff notes that consumers respond positively when they understand that High Ground is made by the people leading distillery tours and serving them in the tasting room. “From the time that the seed goes into the ground to the time that we’re putting the tax strip on the bottle, the same eight people are doing that,” he says. “It definitely resonates.”

Finding the Opportunity

For many craft vodkas, local relevance is crucial. “Intentionally creating a vodka with a sense of place can have a lot of power,” Shoemaker says. “There’s opportunity for regionality.” As Above So Below also makes whiskey, which is still aging and which Shoemaker aims to eventually distribute beyond New Mexico. But the vodka will likely remain close to home, which is the key to its sales strategy. “Ritual is regional and local,” she explains.

Consumers have been primed to expect a premium for products that are authentically craft — and, according to distillers, have shown a willingness to pay it.

Locality plays an even bigger role for craft distilleries that offer cocktails in their tasting rooms, where having a house vodka bolsters the visitor experience and makes financial sense. That’s a big reason why Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton Distillery introduced Fortress Vodka in 2023, years after it began selling whiskey. “We’re trying to run a tasting room. Does it make sense to plug somebody else’s vodka into the program when we can do it ourselves?” asks founder Alex Clark.

Fort Hamilton was already redistilling GNS made with New York grain for its gin; filtering and bottling it as vodka was a logical step, especially as Clark sought to expand Fort Hamilton’s on-premise sales. In an about-face from 15 years ago, the market is now crowded with craft whiskeys, but craft vodka is light on the ground.

“There’s plenty of bars and restaurants out there who don’t currently have room for a craft whiskey brand,” Clark says. “But there’s always room for a good, local, super-well-priced product like Fortress vodka. It allows us to access and open discussions with people who otherwise wouldn’t necessarily be interested in talking to us.”

At about $26 for a liter, Fortress comes in on the low end, line-priced with category leader Tito’s. Most craft vodka tends to be priced above that, anywhere from $30 to $50 or higher. But consumers have been primed to expect a premium for products that are authentically craft — and, according to distillers, have shown a willingness to pay it.

And since vodka sales were worth $7.2 billion in the United States in 2023, according to the Distilled Spirits Council, the movement shows signs of influence beyond its sphere. Even imported vodka, which used to emphasize itself as a bottle-service status symbol — think Grey Goose and Belvedere — is now pulling from the craft playbook. Newer brands like The Reid from New Zealand, Vusu from South Africa, and Nàdar from Scotland eschew slick marketing and instead highlight their use of local ingredients, transparent production processes, and sustainability credentials.

Riding the success of craft spirits, the new generation of craft vodka is overdue for a transformative moment. Clark points out that the vodka boom of the ‘90s was too early for the craft cocktail renaissance, while Applbaum notes that vodka drinkers have been watching other categories, like craft bourbon, explode in creativity and growth. This, he says, is an opportunity for vodka: “You’ve got a consumer who’s thirsty for something new.”

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