Skip to main content

The Best Flavored Vodka Made in America of 2018

st george green chile vodka best flavored vodkas 2018
Dan Baker/The Manual

The Manual Spirit Awards recognize the people making the best damn booze in America. Across nine categories — Bourbon, Rye, Single Malt American Whiskey, Unaged Rum, Aged Rum, Vodka, Flavored Vodka, Gin, and Brandy — we blind-tasted multiple products from around the country to determine our champions. Each of the winning bottles was judged on appearance, aroma, palate, finish, and how well the product represented the category as a whole. Our focus on smaller craft distillers in the U.S. allowed us to highlight spirits that, we hoped, our readers either have not heard of or had the opportunity to try yet.

Best Flavored Vodka

St. George Spirits Green Chile Vodka

As the category name suggests, flavored vodka is a spirit that is, at first, colorless, odorless, tasteless, and bottled at no less than 60 proof, but has had some sort of flavoring added (as well as sugar, in some cases). Since any natural component can be included, liquor store shelves hold everything from typical flavors such as fruits or vegetables to cotton candy, Swedish fish, and more.

Dan Baker/The Manual

This category was difficult because each vodka expressed such different flavors. In order to pick a winner, we chose based on what we felt came the closest to expressing the truest nature of the ingredients featured. In the case of the St. George Spirits Green Chile Vodka, a blend of hot and sweet peppers brings out incredibly vibrant aromas and flavors without being overwhelming.

St. George Spirits Green Chile Vodka is made with five different types of peppers (jalapeño, Serrano, habanero, and red and yellow bell peppers), as well as lime and cilantro to create a full-bodied, spicy liquor. It is available in most states.

Tasting Notes

  • Appearance: St. George Green Chile Vodka is clear with a greenish tint.
  • Nose: You know immediately what you are getting with this vodka. Fresh jalapeños and spice greet you before you get to the citrusy lime and bright, garden-y cilantro notes.
  • Palate: Alive is probably the best way to describe the palate. This vodka reveals itself over multiple sips, with the various peppers — jalapeño, serrano, habanero, bell — all seeming to come to the surface at one time or another. The heat from the peppers is present, but not overpowering, playing nicely against the heat of the alcohol. Throughout, you get an undercurrent of the citrus and cilantro that you originally got on the palate.
  • Finish: Clean and neat, the medium-short finish leaves you with vegetal flavors and heat on your tongue.

About the Distillery

St. George Spirits, one of the pioneers of craft distilling in America, was founded in 1982 by a German man named Jörg Rupf who visited Alameda, California, and found the local produce to be amazing, but the local beverages less so. Rupf came from a family of distillers and set out to make eau de vie (a clear fruit brandy) using fruit from the Bay Area. Although eau de vie was a niche product in America, Rupf inspired a new generation of distillers who would build the craft movement. Rupf and St. George’s current master distiller, Lance Winters, expanded the company’s product line and found huge success with the Hangar One vodka brand, which was eventually sold. After that, St. George Spirits had the financial freedom to experiment, creating a wild array of spirits. In addition to various vodkas, eau de vie (which St. George now calls “fruit brandies”), the distillery also makes gins, single malt whiskey, and even absinthe, among others. St. George’s current vodka lineup includes All Purpose (a mellow spirit made with pears), California Citrus (infused with Valencia oranges, Seville oranges, and bergamot), and Green Chile.

How to Enjoy It In a Cocktail

Bull Shot

With a spicy flavor profile, there are only so many classic cocktails that Green Chile Vodka would work in. We decided to go with the Bull Shot, as this is The Manual, and what is more Manual-esque than a cocktail that involves a meat-based product? Salty, beefy, spicy, the Bull Shot is like a meal in a glass. Think of it like a Bloody Mary without the tomato (which is what it was originally meant to be).

Glass: Collins glass
Tools: Stirring spoon

  • 1 oz St. George Green Chile Vodka
  • .5 oz vodka
  • 4 oz beef bouillon
  • .25 oz lemon juice
  • 1 dash Tabasco sauce
  • 1-3 Jalapeño slices, seeds removed

Method: Pour ingredients into Collins glass and stir well. Add ice. Make a cut in jalapeño slices and slide onto the rim of the glass to garnish.

Best Flavored Vodka Runners-Up

Hangar One Makrut Lime Vodka Prairie Organic Cucumber Flavored Vodka
Hangar One Prairie Organic Spirits
Alameda, California Minneapolis, Minnesota
If you need a boost of crisp citrus flavor in a cocktail, you can’t go wrong with Hangar One’s Makrut Lime, a great flavored vodka out of California. It makes for a simple, yet flavorful, vodka and soda. Minnesota’s Prairie Organic uses a corn base and English cucumbers for a fresh, cool flavor. The result is a soft vodka that easily imparts pleasant cucumber flavors without being overwhelming.

Credits

Article by Sam Slaughter

Additional reporting by Will Nicol

Copy editing by Nicole Raney

Photography by Dan Baker

Video by Dan Baker and Riley Young

Art direction and page layout by Genevieve Poblano

Creative team: Will Hawkins, Hanif Jackson, and Chris DeGraw

Shot on location at Grand Army Tavern in Portland, Oregon

Editors' Recommendations

Sam Slaughter
Sam Slaughter was the Food and Drink Editor for The Manual. Born and raised in New Jersey, he’s called the South home for…
Simple Vodka is Creating a Simple Solution for Hunger
Simple vodka

We love when we get to drink and help others at the same time, and we especially love it when spirits brands allow us to do that by engaging in charitable work through donations, initiatives, etc. One of the newest brands to do so is Simple Vodka.

The genesis for Simple came when the two founders, Danny LaFuente (CEO) and Dan Maslow (president), were working at a company in Miami that donated food from events to a local food shelter. From this experience, they learned that one in six Americans are food insecure.

Read more
The Best Part of Waking Up are Coffee Liqueurs in Your Cup
coffee liqueurs

Coffee and liquor. Liquor and coffee. They just go together. Whether you’re using one to counteract the effects of the other, using one to infuse flavor into the other (as we looked at in our Booze-infused coffee Facebook Live back in June), or mixing them together for a little pick-me-up, the two drinks are almost inextricably linked.

Because of that, it brings us great joy when the two come together in one bottle. In this case, we’re talking about coffee liqueurs. It doesn’t matter if you want a little nip after dinner, or to pour it on some ice cream or, hell, to add it to your coffee on a Sunday morning, coffee liqueurs offer the perfect amount of both coffee flavor and booze. Not sure what kind to get, though? We’ve picked two from our home state of Oregon that go beyond a standard coffee liqueurs and offer a little something else while not losing sight of the original goal—coffee in booze in a beautiful union.
Vivacity Spirits Turkish Coffee Liqueur

Read more
Sweet and Sour: New Amsterdam Vodka Releases Two New Flavors
new amsterdam flavored vodka

Flavored vodkas fiends, get ready, there are two new choices out there for you to try. New Amsterdam Vodka (which also makes one of the best budget gins out there) has recently come out with their latest two flavored vodkas, on the heels of last year’s release, Green Apple.

The new releases, Lemon and Raspberry, which hit shelves this month and next month, respectively, join other flavors such as coconut, mango, and peach. Both flavors are 35% ABV and will retail for around $11.99 each.  This price point, outside of being a damn good value, makes it easy to keep a bottle or two handy (or maybe one of both flavors) in case you have a guest who shows up that doesn’t want to partake in the amazing whiskey collection you surely have in your house.

Read more