Uzbekistan

Does anyone know the actual name of this vodka?

I got this in a liquor store in Tashkent, and it wasn’t exactly cheap for Uzbek standards, but it was still very affordable overall. About 5 euros for 500ml, putting it in the 10/10 department. In hindsight I should have asked the clerks what this tuff was actually called. The bottle looks…

How cheap can a vodka be, and what can we expect from it?

So here’s the second vodka brand I tried when I was in Navoiy. I drank it with some friends I had made there. We all got a bit drunk. Not too much, but a bit. I’m listening to “Damaged” by Black Flag, which is still one of the strongest hc/punk albums of all time. Incidentally, it was also one of the first…

What’s with the dryness in this vodka?

Wow, this one was such a long time ago… Remember when I was hanging out in the Uzbek town of Navoiy? I had bought two bottles of vodka there, tried them and taken my notes, but I had never gotten around to properly write them up. So here I am, with my notes, listening to…

Is this one more legitimate than the Russian vodka of the same name?

This one is called Grelochka, and I bought it in a liquor store next to a supermarket in Tashkent. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen any alcohol for sale in Uzbek supermarkets – only in specialized liquor stores, just like in the US. But then I’ve never seen anyone in Uzbekistan run around with brown paper bags…

Why is there so much sweetness in this fire?

We’ve only had one Uzbek vodka on here before, and that one was Qalampir, a pepper vodka that really wasn’t all that good. So I decided to try a few more. This one is called Stopochkin, and it seems to be pretty…

Should a pepper vodka be so fiery?

I got this particular bottle in Tashkent on the night before I was going to fly to Almaty in order to get a new visa for Uzbekistan. I took it to the lounge of the hostel where I was staying, figuring that there would be other guests to share it with. But I…