The Tasting Panel magazine

November 2013

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At The Catch in Anaheim, guest mixologist Ryan McGraw leads a seminar and cocktail demonstration with Purity Vodka. The Game Plan ON OUR ORANGE COUNTY ROAD TRIP WE DISCOVER FOUR DIVERSE ARENAS WHERE PURITY VODKA SCORES BIG by Meridith May / photos by Leigh Castelli S ome OC'ers claim that Anaheim is the center of the "below Los Angeles" belt—and for good reason. While the beach communities boast white sandy shores and luxury hotels, Anaheim is renowned on a global scale thanks to Disney. With its sports connections (the Angels and the Ducks) Anaheim gets higher scores still, and its convention centers and arenas make it a darn good destination. Then there's Irvine—the business capital of Orange County. With its high-profile, highnet-worth South Coast Plaza shopping center and important corporate headquarters from Hyundai to Broadcom, upscale Irvine was voted sixth-best small city in America to live in the U.S. by CNN Money.com. And for the beachy crowd, Dana Point, on the southern end of Orange County, looks over the Pacific with an enviable ambiance of beautiful people and the surfing crowd—just don't forget your sun block. But this is not a competition; instead, it's an overview of the diversity of on-premise style in the OC. THE TASTING PANEL brought Purity Vodka in to even the score. Hearing that the heart of this Swedish small batch vodka is distilled 34 times was an eye-opener for the managers and mixers, the bar staff and servers, who have been conversing in vodka to the point of brand overload. But Purity Vodka made a lasting impression. We blind tasted side-by-side against other leading vodka brands: Purity came out on top. We created custom cocktails and played with some classics with our select group of trained palates. Spearheading the craft vodka category, Purity Vodka is produced by a Master Blender , Thomas Kuutanen, and made exclusively from natural, organic ingredients in a proprietary copper and gold vodka still in southern Sweden. And here's how it played in the OC. 54  /  the tasting panel  /  november 2013 TP1113_034-65.indd 54 10/24/13 9:19 AM

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