How Is Vodka Made?

Vodka production starts with a starch, and for most commercial production, that means beginning with wheat. For Grey Goose the wheat comes from France's bread basket, Picardy.
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In the video above we went to Cognac, France - the home of Grey Goose - to find out how one vodka goes from grain to bottle.

Vodka production starts with a starch, and for most commercial production, that means beginning with wheat. For Grey Goose the wheat comes from France's bread basket, Picardy. They take soft winter wheat and separate it, and then mill it into flour, sieving it to get to a specific granularity.

Water and enzymes are added so the starch begins to convert to sugar, and then yeast is added to begin fermenting. At Grey Goose they use 6 tanks in a cascade fermentation - the goal is to have no sugar left over and at this stage it is only 10% alcohol.

So to make it into vodka it needs to be distilled and concentrated using a column still. Grey Goose uses five columns, each vaporizing the liquid and removing unwanted components over a four and a half day process. In the end the liquid is concentrated into 90% pure alcohol.

To bring the alcohol down to 40%, all vodkas must add water. Since the quality of the water is such a key ingredient, Grey Goose brings the distilled spirit to Cognac, where the water is rich from the limestone in the soil.

It's filtered once again and then ready to make its way to the consumer. From the grains, to the distillation to the water every element can alter the final product of a vodka. To watch vodka being made make sure to watch the video above!

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