Portobello Road Vodka
The Portobello Road distillery launched itself with gin but has now moved into the vodka market with several intriguing flavours on offer.
The first-ever home I bought was a studio flat that was a 2-minute walk away from Portobello Road. What it would be worth today, I’d rather not know. Portobello Road to me meant the Electric Cinema, and the fabulous weekend market. But it certainly did not have a distillery. Now it does, and it’s a 3-minute walk from my old flat.
Portobello Road Distillery
The distillery looks like a pub from the outside, but it’s a distillery, restaurant, hotel, and bottle shop. It makes ready-to-drink cocktails and holds masterclasses covering gin, whisky, and agave spirits, amongst other things. If I still lived in Notting Hill, I’m sure I’d never be out of the place.
Portobello Road Gins
The Portobello Road Distillery opened in 2011 when four ex-bartender friends got together and formed The Ginstitute, with a small 30-litre copper pot still. They moved on – and also moved down the road to larger premises – and today have a range of unusual gins.
These include a savoury gin, a navy strength gin, a sloeberry and blackcurrant gin, and – one I can’t wait to try as he’s a hero of mine too – a Local Heroes Gin made in tribute to and in conjunction with former Notting Hillbilly Mark Knopfler. Each bottle has a miniature version of the red headband Knopfler wore when he led Dire Straits, which is a really neat idea.
Portobello Road Vodka
Ten years after their founding, and now armed with a 400-litre still, The Portobello Road Distillery launched a range of four vodkas: the basic Potato Vodka, a Golden Madagascan Vanilla Vodka, a Calabrian Bergamot Citrus Vodka, and a Toasted Coffee Bean Vodka.
Portobello Road’s master distiller and co-founder, Jake Burger, explained how the vodka production came about: “In 2020 when the world was in the early grip of the pandemic, we leapt into action to create 40,000 units of hand sanitiser for the Metropolitan Police. Due to the exceptional circumstances that the world found itself in, we were unable to obtain English wheat spirit that we have always used as the foundation for our gins.
“Undeterred, we searched high and low and eventually discovered a supplier of exceptional quality English spirit distilled from potatoes. Truth be told, it was something of a travesty to be using such a high quality alcohol for hand sanitiser so we vowed to revisit this ingredient and use it to create something altogether more befitting of its quality – and so Portobello Road Vodka was born.”
Portobello Road Potato Vodka
Their core Potato Vodka is distilled from British potatoes, with about 3kg of potatoes going into every bottle. Potato vodkas are the best vodkas for me, and on the nose this has a purity and creaminess that belies its price-tag in the UK of £24 a bottle.
Tasting it, there is again a vanilla creaminess and sweetness, totally smooth, very easy to sip neat, or to have on the rocks. We sampled it with some Fever Tree Tonic and it made for a really tasty and refreshing vodka and tonic, a cut above your bog-standard vodkas though not overly expensive at that price tag.
Other Portobello Road Vodkas
What’s equally impressive is that Portobello Road’s other three vodkas are also all only £24 a bottle. And they’re equally classy, as you’d expect if you start off with a good vodka and then infuse it with quality natural ingredients.
Their Calabrian Bergamot Citrus Vodka adds a zesty citrus zing to the vodka, which is just as suitable for sipping as for making long drinks. Again, a simple tonic water helps turn it into a nicely citrus vodka and tonic.
Golden Madagascan Vanilla Vodka is yet another tasty riff on the vodka theme, and it does have a nicely golden tinge to it. Vanilla pods from Madagascar are noted for being the best in the world and these make what was already a super-smooth creamy taste even more so, adding a dash of extra sweetness – but not too much.
I saved what I thought would be the best offering till last: Toasted Coffee Bean Vodka. I’ve yet to find a coffee/espresso vodka I didn’t like, and this is up there with the best of them. The potato vodka is left for four hours to soak up the aromas and flavours of toasted Colombian coffee beans, and then distilled again so it’s back to being a colourless spirit.
On the nose the coffee aromas are irresistible, like when you walk past a proper coffee shop. The flavours are even more enjoyable, and definitely one shot is not enough. Espresso Martinis are having a big thing at the moment and there’s a recipe for one on the Portobello Road website. It uses a Madagascan vanilla liqueur and some fresh espresso coffee, and I can almost taste the result as I write.
Buying Portobello Road Vodka
You can buy all these vodkas from The Bottle Shop on the Portobello Road website. You can also buy a ready-made bottle of Sophie’s Espresso Martini, if you don’t want to make your own, and there are a few other ready-to-drink cocktails on these as well, so take a good mooch round.
In the UK you can also find their vodkas and gins on Amazon. You’ll also find them at Master of Malt, with international shipping.
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