Vodka

Vodka is distilled ethanol with almost nothing left in it, and it can be made from nearly anything that ferments. Grain is the default: wheat, rye or corn. Tito’s is corn, Ketel One is wheat, Chopin is potato, and Cîroc is grape. The base barely survives the process, which is the point, and it is why the sourcing question matters far less than the marketing suggests.

What vodka is made from

Any fermentable sugar or starch works. Grain and potato are starches that need to be converted to sugar before yeast can eat them; grapes and sugar beet already carry the sugar. After fermentation the liquid is a weak, cloudy alcohol, and distillation does the real work. Column stills strip out most of the flavour compounds, called congeners, by running the spirit through many stages in one pass. Charcoal filtration then polishes what is left. Gluten from a wheat or rye base does not carry over in distillation, and the grain-free bottles are mostly a comfort for coeliac drinkers, which we cover on the gluten-free vodka page.

What the law requires

In the US, 27 CFR 5.142 defines vodka as neutral spirits: distilled at or above 95% alcohol by volume, and bottled at no less than 40% ABV. The rule is unusually specific about additions. Vodka may be treated with up to 2 grams per liter of sugar and up to 1 gram per liter of citric acid, and it may not be aged in wood barrels. Anything beyond that and it becomes flavoured vodka or a specialty spirit. Two grams per liter works out to under a tenth of a gram in a 1.5 oz shot, so unflavoured vodka is effectively sugar-free.

How strong it is

The bottles on shelf run from 37.5% to 50%, with 40% the norm. The 40% US minimum applies to vodka sold there; the EU sets 37.5%.

Calories and sugar

A 1.5 oz shot at 40% is about 97 kcal, all of it from ethanol at 7 kcal per gram. There is no meaningful carbohydrate. Sugar enters in only one place: flavoured vodka, where sweetened bottles can carry real sugar. Plain vodka does not. Mixers are where the sugar actually comes from, so a vodka soda and a vodka cranberry are not the same drink for calorie purposes. See the healthiest vodka for per-brand numbers.

Vodka against other spirits

Vodka has the fewest congeners of any common spirit, which is the reason it sits low on our hangover scale. The trade-off is that it has no character to slow you down, so it is easy to drink fast. Our comparisons put it against tequila, gin, bourbon and beer.

What it means for hangovers

Vodka scores a 2 on the hangover index: very low congeners, histamines, sulfites, tannins and sugar. That is the lowest-impact way to take in alcohol, but ethanol itself is the main cause of a hangover, and no spirit fixes that. Drink the same amount of vodka as whiskey and you will feel better the next day mostly because of what is missing, not because it is gentle. Flavoured bottles and sugary mixers undo most of that advantage.