A Taste of Purus

Have you ever gone to a wine or beer tasting?  Those are pretty common, right?  Joel and I had the great opportunity to do many wine tastings both here and abroad.  But, we recently experienced a new kind of tasting that I never really knew happened.  It was a vodka tasting.  Now, Joel and I aren't alcoholics or anything (pinky swear promise), we love the idea of a different kind of date night, and thought that this might be a fun experience.

One of our favorite places to eat at in the Metro East is a place called The Wine Tap.  It's a cute little restaurant with plenty of al fresco dining, flatbread pizzas (among other things), and a fantastic wine selection.  They often hold wine tastings from local vineyards, but they decided to do a vodka tasting with the makers of Purus Vodka.  I had never heard of them before (they're kind of new), so we thought...why not?  First up: the food of The Wine Tap.

We started off with an appetizer of Foccacia Bread and Olive oil.  They cook the broad over an open flame, and pair it with EVOO and spices.  It's really amazing.  I could get this every time we go (and I usually do).  We also got one of my favorite flatbreads, called "The Rob," which has sausage, bacon, and mozzarella.  It is superb.  Seriously.  The bacon is so smoky and tasty, and the sausage has just enough kick to make it super tasty.  As you can see from the picture below, we dug in before I remembered to take a picture.  Whoops!

Delicious Carb Overload.

The Rob: A little slice of heaven in your mouth.

Then we settled in for the vodka tasting.  They talked about how they got started, how vodka is made, and talked about the different ways you can use vodka at parties, for cooking, etc.  It was really informative.  We sampled just plain vodka, which was actually fairly smooth, and then we tried different infused vodkas.  The first one was strawberry pineapple, and it was really yummy.  It was just "one the rocks" (they all were),and though I don't normally drink vodka this way, it really could be a stand alone drink.

The second one was infused with peppers.  This really wasn't something I was interested in, but Joel really liked it.  They said that it would go well with Bloody Mary's, and while others ordered one that way (and seemed to enjoy it), I'm not much of a fan.  Moving on.

The last tasting was infused with skittles.  Yes, you read that right.  Skittles.  It was a little too sweet for my taste, but I think if you put it in some kind of juice that it would really flavor it up.

It really was a fun event to go to.  Drinking straight vodka is no joke, though, so make sure if you go that you have a sober companion to drive everyone back.  Although we didn't buy any of the vodka, we found out that a couple of our favorite St. Louis eateries carry it, and we wouldn't mind adding it to our menu when we're out.