VX Vodka (750 ml)

When Sidney Frank launched Grey Goose in 1997, he hired François Thibault — a Cognac Maître de Chai, not a vodka technician — and that single personnel decision defines everything about this spirit. Thibault refused to purchase neutral grain spirit for redistillation; instead, he insisted on grain-to-glass control, treating wheat the way a Cognac house treats its base wine.

The wheat is blé panifiable supérieur, sourced exclusively from three family-farm cooperatives on the soft-soil plains of Picardy, sown in October and harvested after a full ten-month growing cycle — four months longer than summer wheat — concentrating cereal density. Milled on-site at Saint-Quentin, it ferments continuously across six cascading tanks before a single five-column distillation to 96% ABV, deliberately stopping short of the maximum neutrality that Eastern European tradition demands.

The high-proof spirit travels 600 km south to Gensac-la-Pallue in the Cognac region, where it is blended with artesian spring water drawn from 150 m below the facility, naturally filtered through Champagne limestone and subject to an EU Conservation Order, then demineralised via double reverse osmosis to pH ~5. A single light cellulose-and-active-carbon polish — not industrial chill-filtration — is the only processing step before bottling at 40% ABV with zero additives.

The special feature: Grey Goose invented the ultra-premium vodka price tier in 1997 by arguing that vodka could carry terroir — a transgression the category has spent three decades debating. The result is cracked wheat, faint anise, and limestone mineral freshness that a re-distilled neutral spirit cannot replicate.