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Krister Asplund explains with a laugh over a cup of coffee.
While there is a sense of origin and terroir, the qualities
one associates with Absolut come from the knowledge,
experience and know-how of the team of distillers at work.
And with Absolut Elyx, its unique features can without any
doubt be credited to the workmanship and hand-crafted
copper distillation.
– As we got the old copper still up and running again,
we had to revisit knowledge that only a handful of the old
distillers have, Asplund continues. The stills at the Nöbbelöv
distillery are mostly computer controlled and automated,
but with the old still in Åhus it’s all down to hand-pulled
levers and controls. It was built in 1921, and had been
silent for decades, so there aren’t that many of us who
know how to adjust and fine-tune
all the settings to get everything
right. We’re all nearing the age
when we’ll be retiring, so we’ve put
an intense training schedule in place
to make sure the younger generation
of distillers know how to work the
old stills.
Using the old copper still in Åhus
and locally sourced wheat may be
exactly the way vodka production a
century ago looked like, but Krister
Asplund is hesitant to name it distilling
as it was done in the olddays.
– As a master distiller, I’m obsessed
with improving every step of the distillation process. Over
the years, we’ve tweaked and perfected every detail, and
now have decades of knowledge to lean on. When talking
about spirits, producing a very clean vodka is the easy part.
Deducting the parts you don’t want while enhancing the
flavors and characters you do want in the spirit is the really
difficult part. You just can’t copy it, and that’s where our
experience and knowledge is invaluable.
No matter how much chemistry and technology you put
into place, distilling a spirit always offers a certain level of
surprise – or an ’x-factor’ if you wish. Absolut Elyx proved to
be no different, with the finished spirit working unusually
well when mixing the spirit for cocktails.
– I have to admit, Krister Asplund says, that we didn’t
quite anticipate how well the Absolut Elyx would enhance
other flavors. If you take an Absolut Elyx Martini for
example, you only need a fraction of vermouth compared
with traditional martinis. My favorite way of drinking it is
neat with just one whole star-anise and a big lump of ice
of high quality, and the Absolut Elyx really picks up the
flavors of the aniseed in a magnificent way!
Producing vodka from the fields of Skåne, Krister’s team
started implementing a strict environmental sustainability
program some 17 years ago. Looking at the three areas where
the operations have an impact on the environment, they now
use green energy for all the production (”we actually have
to use liquefied petroleum gas for a fraction of the production,
but we compensate that with tree planting in Mexico”),
wheat-farming where they strive to find a sustainable
Elyx MARtINI
50 ml Absolut Elyx
10 ml dry vermouth
stir and strain into a chilled cocktail
glass. garnish with a star anise
or lemon twist.
approach for industrial growing
and finally at transports, with
several programs in place to
ease off the CO2 emissions
from local and international
transport.
– We Swedes are quite bad at
telling people about what we do
in those areas, since we’re not
perfect. We’d rather stay quiet
until we’ve reached perfection.
But that’s part of the definition
of ”environmental work”; you’re
never done with it. We have
never stopped working with
our environmental program, and we continue to get better
at implementing it over the whole process.
Undeniably, the on-going work with the green aspects
of Absolut resembles the non-compromising approach that
Asplund applies to his vodka production. If the environmental
outcome is anywhere near his work on Absolut Elyx,
he can be pleased with the results. As a member of the sales
department remarked, having tried Absolut Elyx for the
first time: ’This… is liquid silk’. But we hand over to Krister
Asplund for a final summary:
– Developing Absolut Elyx is the essence of all the experience
from distilling in Åhus. Put simply, we’ve taken all
our knowledge passed down through generations of Swedish
vodka makers.
Absolut Elyx is the essence of Absolut.
Åhus Distillery (exterior) Åhus Distillery (interior) Single estate wheat, Råbelöf