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Your 5pm blogger was recently at a vintage vodka tasting hosted by Zubrowka, makers of the original Polish bison grass vodka.

Led by vodka expert Ian Wisniewski, it put the final nail in the coffin of the idea that vodka is some sort of tasteless, neutral spirit best used for mixing.

Among the vodkas tasted were a Zubrowka bison grass from the 60s; a vintage Cytronowka, or lemon vodka, plus a pieperzowka, or pepper vodka, which again had been bottled in the 60s.

Turkish delight

They were all eye-openers. Not least the pepper vodka which, to me anyway, almost tasted like Turkish delight.

Finding bottles of vodka which have somehow evaded being drunk since the 60s isn’t easy. Unlike whisky or cognac distillers, vodka makers tend not to lay down stocks of the spirit for future consumption.

If you don’t have a bottle of 50-year-old vodka kicking about then a bottle of modern day Zubrowka makes an interesting alternative to most other vodkas now on the market in the UK.

Bison grass

Each bottle contains a blade of bison grass which has been harvested by one of 21 families from secret areas in the wilds of the Bialowieza Forest, in north-east Poland. The pickers season the grass by storing it in their roofs. Once seasoned and prepared for adding to the spirit, the grass gives the liquid a golden olive colour and a summery, grassy taste.

Fresh hay

W. Somerset Maugham compared it to freshly mown hay, spring flowers, thyme and lavender. He also said that it was soft on the palate and ‘so comfortable that it’s like listening to music by moonlight’.

I’m with him on the hay, flowers and softness on the palate but didn’t quite have enough to get the moonlit music with each mouthful.