There are certainly a few misconceptions out there. One is that all vodka is made from potatoes. False. Some vodka is made from potatoes, but certainly not all. Let's take a look at some popular brands and what they are derived from.
Vodka Brands and Their Ingredients
Grey Goose - French winter wheat
Stolichnaya - wheat and rye
Absolut - winter wheat
Ketel One - wheat
Level - barley
Skyy - wheat
Belvedere - rye
Smirnoff - unspecified grain (probably a mixture of wheat and rye)
Chopin - potatoes
Ciroc - grapes
Three Olives - grapes
Akvinta - Italian wheat
So, it looks like wheat and rye are the principal ingredients (aside from water) in many of today's popular vodkas. This probably says more to the fact that the industrial cultivation of these cereal grains makes their cost relatively lower than potato or anything else. Everyone has his or her own opinion on which vodka tastes best, but it probably has more to do with the distillation process than the actual ingredients. Good vodka is relatively tasteless and vodka theoretically ferments through all of the initial carbohydrate, so at the end of the day, it's about how effective the distillation and fermentation process was.
Does the Grain Used to Distill Vodka Affect Calories
Generally speaking, it does not. The amount of grain and carb relative to water affects how strong and how caloric the vodka is. A typical 80 proof vodka has 97 calories. Visit the Efficient Drinker for a further discussion about calories in vodka
