Stillhouse Vodka Review

Travel Distilled reviews Stillhouse Spirits Classic Vodka made from corn in Tennessee and describing itself as ‘America’s Finest’, but is it?

I love the stainless steel containers that the various Stillhouse Spirits come in, simple but funky cans, and in the case of vodka pure white is the color choice.. I’d already tried their Black Bourbon, which I gave a mixed review to. It wasn’t ‘America’s Finest’, and it was a bit rough, but it had a nice molasses/coffee taste and would work well as an after-dinner sipper with coffee.

Stillhouse Spirits Vodka

Stillhouse Classic Vodka is made in Tennessee, using water that comes from a natural limestone aquifer, which filters out impurities while adding minerals. The base spirit is corn, which the company describes as estate-grown. This ought to mean grown on their own estate but could be someone else’s estate, though that’s not made clear.

There’s no indication of how many times it’s distilled, so presumably just the once, which is fine as there’s a lot of nonsense spoken about five-times distilled or seven-times distilled. Unless you’re using a small pot still, vodka really only needs distilling once. If it’s distilled five times, it doesn’t make it five times better or five times purer, it means it takes a little longer and it sounds good when they’re promoting it.

The Stillhouse Classic Vodka is then filtered through sugar maple charcoal, i.e. charcoal made from the sugar maple tree. It doesn’t mean sugar or maple flavors are going to be added to the vodka. The charcoal is to purify the spirit.

Stillhouse Vodka Review

All this is well and good, but what’s it like? The screwtop of the can cleverly holds down a label telling you about the vodka, Stillhouse’s other products, and with some cocktail recipes. It’s amazing what you can cram into a small space.

On the nose the vodka’s quite aromatic, for a vodka, with some hints of citrus and perhaps there is a touch of sweet-smelling maple in there. Tasting the vodka, though, it’s quite rough, and hard to detect much beyond the slightly medicinal alcohol taste.

It’s certainly not America’s finest, although it’s also not the worst I’ve tasted either. I wouldn’t use this as a sipping vodka, not when you could have something like the super-smooth and delicious Cascade Potato Vodka I reviewed recently. It’s definitely more of a mixer.

Stillhouse Classic Vodka Cocktail Recipes

Conveniently, Stillhouse has supplied a few suggested cocktail recipes for its Classic Vodka. Here are just a couple of them, which sound good to me.

CLASSIC DIRTY MARTINI

3oz Stillhouse Classic Vodka

1/2oz Dry Vermouth

1/2oz Olive Juice

Directions: Add all the ingredients into a mixing glass with ice and shake. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with 3 olives.

Vodka Martini Cocktail with Stillhouse Vodka — Vodka Martini

SCREW YOUR MIMOSA

1.5oz Stillhouse Classic Vodka

1oz Pineapple Juice

1oz Orange Juice

Top with Champagne or Prosecco

Directions: Build in a Collins glass. Add all the ingredients into a glass with ice, gently stir. Garnish with pineapple wedge.

Screw Your Mimosa Cocktail with Stillhouse Vodka — Screw Your Mimosa Vodka Cocktail

Other Stillhouse Spirits

While this was a bit of a middle-of-the-road vodka, I definitely recommend you take a look at the Stillhouse Spirits website (see below). They make some interesting-sounding spirits, including a Mint Chip Whiskey, a Peach Tea Whiskey, an Apple Crisp Whiskey, a Spiced Cherry Whiskey, a Coconut Whiskey, and a Red Hot Whiskey. I’d love to know more about that last one but unfortunately their website isn’t the easiest to navigate and I couldn’t find anything out about it. It doesn’t even appear on their online order page, so maybe sales were red hot too and it’s simply no longer available.