Whisky may be our national drink, but Scots consume more vodka and have done for years.
As a spirit that is "odourless, colourless and tasteless", to borrow the US tax authorities' definition, there is only so much you can say about the substance of vodka. The story is all about style, but if you get it right vast fortunes can be made.
Ten years ago this summer, Bacardi bought Grey Goose from the late Sidney Frank for an estimated $2.3 billion. It was a staggering sum for a single spirit and three times what Whyte & Mackay - with all its distilleries and brands - has just been sold for. Two-thirds of the money went straight into Frank's pocket, though he didn't have long to enjoy it, suffering a fatal heart attack on his private jet two years later.
Every budding spirits entrepreneur dreams of becoming the next Sidney Frank, but I suspect he was a one-off. The man's genius was obvious from Jagermeister - a foul-tasting German liqueur he turned into the hottest student brand ever with the help of some scantily-clad "Jagerettes" touring US campuses and dispensing shots. In 1995 he turned his guns on vodka.
They say Grey Goose was distilled out of thin air - a concept that began with no distillery, no bottle and no spirit. It was named after an old liebfraumilch Frank once imported, and was aimed at Absolut, America's top-selling premium vodka at $17 a pop. Rather than go head to head or undercut the Swedish brand, he doubled the price and called it super-premium.
Even the most gullible American needed justification to spend a jaw-dropping $30 on an un-aged industrial spirit. Frank built his case on perceived quality, having Grey Goose distilled and bottled in France - the cradle of luxury drinks such as champagne. He also had it rated the world's best vodka by an obscure institute in Chicago and broadcast the fact in endless adverts in the Wall Street Journal. With loads of other marketing tricks and an appearance on Sex In The City - a terrific coup - sales leapt from zero to one million cases in just five years.
Only in America, you might say, and only during the boom years of conspicuous consumption, but I wouldn't be so sure. Consider the crazy property boom in London and record-breaking sales of luxury cars, and another Goose seems just around the corner.
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