The Dumbing-Down of Flavored Vodkas

Stolichnaya has had admirable success with flavored vodkas such as limonnaya (lemon) and pertsovka (red pepper), so it’s introducing half a dozen new ones. Vanil, persik and kafya take their names from the Russian words for vanilla, peach and coffee (well, sort of; in Russian the last is kofe), but for some reason Stoli calls its cinnamon, raspberry and strawberry flavors by the transparently bogus names “zinamon, “razberi and “strasberi.”

Come on, guys. As if anybody who can pronounce pertsovka would have a problem with koritsa, malina or klubnika. And really--did you have to make it “strasberi?”