Żubrówka

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Żubrówka

Type	Flavoured Vodka
Proof	80
Manufacturer	Polmos Białystok
Country of origin	Białystok, Poland
Introduced	16th century
Variants	US-export versions without coumarin
Related products	List of vodkas

Żubrówka (pronounced: /ʐub'rufka/ (help·info); also known in English as Bison Grass Vodka) is a brand of dry herb-flavoured vodka distilled from rye, 40% alcohol (80 proof). The raw rectified spirit is then mixed with a tincture made of Hierochloe odorata, often called bison grass. This grass grows in the Białowieża Forest, which is partly in Poland and partly in Belarus. A blade of this grass can be found in every bottle of genuine Żubrówka and is the reason for its particular taste, aroma, and yellowish colour. Its name comes from żubr or zubr, the Slavic word for the wisent, which are particularly fond of the herb. The flavour is unique, and can be described as having vanilla, coconut and almond-like qualities.

1 History
2 Żubrówka in the United States
3 Practices
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

Żubrówka has been manufactured in the region of the contemporary Polish-Belarusian (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) border since the 16th century, and by 18th century was one of the favourite raw drinks of the nobility (szlachta) and the peasantry alike. In 1926 the Polish Polmos company in Brześć Litewski (now Belalco, Brest, Belarus) invented a method to mass produce Żubrówka, which was then copied by numerous companies worldwide, under a variety of brand names. The original distillery company in Brest (Belaco) still produces Brestskaya Zubrovka (Зуброўка), as do Russia (Зубровка), Lithuania (Stumbrinė), United States (Bison Vodka), Ukraine (Зубрiвка), Germany (Grasovka), the Czech Republic (Zubrovka), and many other countries. Currently the brand Żubrówka, its translations into other languages, and the grass inside a bottle of alcoholic beverage are registered by the Polmos Białystok company in Białystok, Poland.

[edit] Żubrówka in the United States

Because bison grass contains the toxic compound coumarin, which is prohibited as a food additive by the Food and Drug Administration, importing of Żubrówka into the United States was banned in 1978 by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.^[1] When produced according to traditional methods (between one and two kilograms of grass per thousand liters of alcohol), Żubrówka contains approximately 12 milligrams of coumarin per liter. In 1999, Polish distilleries introduced reformulated US-export versions of the product, sometimes using artificial flavors and colors, always with the emblematic blade of grass in every bottle, but "neutralized" and coumarin-free.

The trademark owner and owner of Polmos Bialystok - Central European Distribution Corporation (Nasdaq:CEDC), Poland's largest liquor distributor^[2] introduced the brand to the United States in 2007.

[edit] Practices

Żubrówka is usually served pure and chilled, mixed with apple juice^[3] (a drink known in Polish as tatanka, jabłecznik or szarlotka, which also means "apple pastry", in the UK as a frisky bison^[4]), or over vanilla ice cream.