Vodka is consistently one of the top selling spirits in the US and these are the bottles that deserve a place of honor on your bar cart.

Vodka is composed mainly of water and ethanol but sometimes with traces of impurities and flavourings. Traditionally, it is made by distilling liquid from fermented cereal grains. Potatoes have been used in more recent times, and some modern brands use fruits, honey, or maple sap as the base.

Since the 1890s, standard vodkas have been 40% alcohol by volume (ABV) (80 U.S. proof).The European Union has established a minimum alcohol content of 37.5% for vodka.Vodka in the United States must have a minimum alcohol content of 40%

Vodka is traditionally drunk "neat" (not mixed with water, ice, or other mixers), and it is often served freezer chilled in the vodka belt of Belarus, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Ukraine. It is also used in cocktails and mixed drinks, such as the vodka martini, Cosmopolitan, vodka tonic, screwdriver, greyhound, Black or White Russian, Moscow mule, Bloody Mary, and Caesar.

The word vodka was recorded for the first time in 1405 in Akta Grodzkie,[10] the court documents from the Palatinate of Sandomierz in Poland.[10] At the time, wódka referred to medicines and cosmetic products, while the beverage was called gorzałka (from the Old Polish gorzeć meaning "to burn"), which is also the source of Ukrainian horilka (горілка) or Belarusian harelka (гарэлка). The word vodka written in Cyrillic appeared first in 1533, in relation to a medicinal drink brought from Poland to Russia by the merchants of Kievan Rus'.

Although the word vodka could be found in early manuscripts and lubok pictograms, it began to appear in Russian dictionaries only in the mid-19th century. It was attested in Sámuel Gyarmathi's Russian-German-Hungarian glossary of 1799, where it is glossed with Latin vinum adustum ("burnt [i.e. distilled] wine").