Review: ALB Vodka

ALB is the three-letter IATA code for the airport at Albany, New York, and it’s also been adopted by the company that makes this vodka there, from 100% American corn. Its six-times distilled and quadruple charcoal filtered before being proofed with New York water sourced from the Alcove Reservoir, a limestone-laden source. (It’s also the first licensed distillery in Albany since Prohibition.)

ALB Vodka Review

If I had to guess, I’d wager that 4x filtration is the secret sauce here: ALB is a very soft and silky vodka, rounded at the edges to the point of unctuousness. Fans of biting, Old World styled vodkas will cringe at the lush, vanilla-soaked character here, coming across almost like it’s been infused with melted ice cream. Other drinkers will love the stuff.

It’s definitely not a neutral vodka. The nose quickly finds a medicinal note, but the palate wipes it all away in short order. Vanilla cream, pastry cream, strawberry cream, milk chocolate cream — pretty much anything with cream in it — all give the vodka a dessert-adjacent character. If you’re looking for something for an espresso martini or a cosmopolitan, this is a bottle I wouldn’t hesitate to reach for. A vodka martini? I’d rethink.

80 proof.

A- / $20 (often less) 

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