Blat Vodka: The World's Purest Vodka, Made in Gran Canaria
Most premium vodka brands make the same claim, expressed in different ways. Purity. Quality. Craftsmanship. Smooth finish. It is reasonable to be sceptical. What does any of it actually mean, and how would you know if it were true?
Blat Vodka does something none of those brands do. It submitted its spirit to an independent laboratory accredited by the United States Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), and published the results.
The result: 0.0 mg/L of detected impurities. Not close to zero. Zero.
What the numbers actually mean
Impurities in vodka are the natural byproducts of fermentation that distillers try to remove but never quite eliminate. They include compounds like methanol, isoamyl alcohol, isobutanol, and acetaldehyde. In small quantities these are not dangerous, but they affect flavour, and they are what your body processes when you have a headache the morning after a few glasses of vodka.
The independent TTB-accredited laboratory tested Blat Vodka for eight specific impurities: 1-butanol, active amyl alcohol, isoamyl alcohol, isobutanol, methanol, n-propanol, acetaldehyde, and ethyl acetate. All eight returned 0.0 mg/L.
For context, here is how the same test compares against other premium vodkas, published on the Blat website:
- Blat Vodka: 0.0 mg/L
- Skyy: 0.8 mg/L
- Grey Goose: 1.1 mg/L
- Absolut: 1.1 mg/L
- Smirnoff: 1.5 mg/L
- Belvedere: 2.5 mg/L
- Ketel One: 5.3 mg/L
- Stolichnaya: 5.7 mg/L
Grey Goose, one of the most marketed premium vodkas in the world, contains 1.1 mg/L of impurities. Blat contains none. That is a measurable, verifiable difference, not a marketing claim.
How they achieved it
Fernando and Esteban Banus are brothers from Tarragona in Spain whose family has been in the spirits industry since 1987, when their company COGRAMI S.A.E. began producing and distributing Pernod and Bols products. In 1993, they took over the family distillery in the Canary Islands and spent years researching a proprietary process to eliminate fermentation impurities entirely without affecting flavour.
The method is patented and the details are not disclosed. Visitors to the factory are not permitted. The brothers describe it only as a unique combination of distillation and filtration techniques developed over many years of experimentation. What they will say is that the starting material matters as much as the process: the wheat used in Blat Vodka is exclusively French, non-GMO, and government-certified.
The water is equally deliberate. The Canary Islands receive very little conventional rainfall, but the volcanic mountains capture moisture from Atlantic sea clouds as they pass. This water filters naturally through ancient lava rock, collecting minerals before emerging as some of the most naturally purified water available. It is the same phenomenon that makes Obsidian Gin remarkable: a Canarian geological gift that happens to be ideal for premium spirits production.
The bottle
The design of the Blat Vodka bottle was commissioned from the Peter Schmidt Group, a Hamburg-based design studio whose work is exhibited in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York. The bottle has won three international design awards. It is tall, clean, and unmistakably premium.
It also tells a story without saying a word: a spirit that was designed from first principles with the same rigour applied to every other aspect of its production.
Who drinks it
Blat has developed a following in the United States, Germany, and Switzerland, where approximately 300,000 bottles are sold each year. Among its fans are Russell Crowe and members of the Hearst family. These are not paid endorsements. They are simply people who found the vodka and decided it was worth talking about.
In the UK, almost nobody has heard of it yet. Which means if you buy a bottle now, you will be ahead of the curve before it arrives.
How to drink it
The honest answer to how to drink a 0% impurity vodka is: neat, over ice, with nothing added. That is where the work the Banus brothers put into the process is most evident. There is a clarity and a softness to Blat that is different from any other vodka, and mixing it with tonic or juice obscures that difference.
For those who prefer a mixed drink, a Blat martini is excellent: 60ml Blat, 15ml dry vermouth, stirred over ice and strained into a chilled glass with a lemon twist. The cleanliness of the spirit makes every other element in the glass more apparent.
It also makes a remarkable base for a vodka sour: 50ml Blat, 25ml fresh lemon juice, 15ml sugar syrup, shaken hard. The absence of impurities means the citrus comes through with unusual brightness.
Available in the UK
Blat Vodka is 70cl, 40% ABV, priced at £39.00. It is not stocked in UK supermarkets or the major spirits retailers. We import it directly and stock it as part of our Canarian spirits range alongside Artemi Caramel Vodka, Obsidian Gin, and the full range of Canarian rum and honey rum.
If you care about what is actually in your vodka, this is worth trying.