Having now spent a good amount of time with it, I think Beluga Allure might be one of the most “giftable” Vodkas I’ve yet encountered. I say this with about 80% praise and 20% cynicism.
Case in point: Beluga Allure comes dressed in enough leather to make a fetish model grin ear to ear. With its little gold buckles, leather hood, and a tiny corset wrapped around its neck, this bottle stands out. First impressions count for a lot, and with so many blah bottles on the shelf, Beluga deserves a thumbs up for designing something with real presence. If you gift this to vodka-drinking friends, they will be legitimately impressed even if they’ve never heard of it.
Why all the leather? Turns out the Allure is a vodka made in celebration of the Russian polo team. Like the Beluga brand itself—a nod to horrendously expensive fish eggs—the polo allusion is intended to vicariously connect the drinker to a world where the upper .0001% spend their days buying horses, sailing on yachts, and having their trophy wives and boy-toys pour them vodkas like this whenever they become parched. Y’know: rich people things.
“Taste-wise, the Beluga Allure is lovely, and this stuff drinks like water. ”
Apparently, the distillery does a few things extra with the Allure to elevate it over the standard Beluga vodka, which I’ve reviewed previously. Specifically, the Allure is rested for two months and small quantities of maple syrup and fig extract are added to the base spirit.
In reading that description off the Beluga website, I realized I knew nothing about the process of “resting” vodkas. Some say if you did the distillation right, it should make no difference. Others say that it’s a necessary process to remove unwanted compounds and aromas before bottling that could be created when you combine alcohol with one’s water source. Sixty days of resting seems pretty generous. I’ve known people who have been hit by cars and didn’t even get sixty days of rest.
To Beluga’s credit, the Allure has no off-notes. I stuffed my nose into the glass and didn’t experience anything by way of ethanol reek. Like many Vodkas, I’m always challenged to find something in the aroma, but after about thirty seconds of smelling like a maniac I did come away with a very pleasant sweet-and-earthy combination of white chocolate and cinnamon sticks. Maybe resting works!
Flavor-wise, the Allure is lovely. It might be the power of suggestion, but I feel like I taste a very, very small combination of maple and fig on the front end. The arrival is subtly and pleasantly sweet, before a big development of grain not unlike a good sourdough bread. Intermittently, there are some nice hints of caraway seed, dill, and molasses. The finish is free of burn—over ice, this stuff literally drinks like water—and you’re left with some pleasant nutmeg and soft cinnamon spice that lingers surprisingly long for a clear spirit.
So now for that cynicism I mentioned earlier: a grandmother in Estonia is probably stitching leather bibs for the Beluga Allure at this very moment, which you and I will later end up paying for. When a $40 Vodka competes in a world where there are several very, very good $20 Vodkas, oftentimes all that extra twenty bucks gets you is pageantry and posturing. It’s also a known phenomenon that we’re more likely to say we like something if we’re told beforehand that it’s expensive.
I thought about this for a while, along with a few related questions: Is the Beluga Allure all that expensive? And do I feel bamboozled? Perhaps my wallet has become numb to the constant assaults from scotch and wild varieties of mezcal, but $40 doesn’t seem astronomical for a very good bottle of vodka. And, unlike the stock Beluga, which was fine, but certainly not very good, an extra couple of sawbucks for what tastes like a clear and delicious step up seems warranted.
By the end of my bottle, the Beluga Allure had earned a place among my favorite vodkas, including Imperia and Russian Standard Gold. If all vodka tastes the same to you—which is not a dig, by the way; it took a long and dedicated study of the category before I was able to find nuance—then get something like Reyka, Belvedere, or Tito’s and save some cash. However, Beluga Allure is commendable because it isn’t all just fancy-pants luxury posturing, and it’s one of very few vodkas I would seek out and buy again.
