Rating: 9/23 I recall being surprised by the flavor here. I expected it to taste like paint thinner, but it was actually fairly savory. Let's see how it holds up. N: Yeah, I'm not going to try this at full proof. Watered down to in the ballpark of 40-45%, I get ethanol, some meat, and a bit of a clean, dry, mild grain. There really isn't much on the nose though. P: So a tiny sip a full proof isn't as burning as I expected. It's viscous and savory with a lot of pepper. With water added to bring it down just a bit above 40%, it's still quite viscous with the same savory notes and a big, long dose of pepper combined with a little bit of sweetness, grain, and even light floral perfume before being rounded out by a lemon tartness that just barely avoids tasting like chemicals. There is some ethanol on a bigger sip. This is pretty harsh though. OK, it's super harsh. Beluga is smooth in comparison. Surprisingly, it isn't all that bad of a vodka though. I wonder whether the distillation up to 95% ABV required a lot of the elements that usually contaminate the flavor to be discarded, producing a better than average vodka. I don't love the palate, but it's better than seems reasonable for such an infamous drink. The more the proof goes down, the more some funky vegetal flavors and maybe a hint of sulfur come out, but that is very minimal. But the immense harshness remains. The harshness is the insurmountable problem here to be sure. F: The savoriness and pepper linger along with a clean water essence and some alcohol. Occasionally, a hint of lemon blossom wafts back in and there is a consistent mellow bitterness. Nothing exciting, but far from awful. Aside from the fact that it still burns. I'm pretty surprised by this. I'd rather not drink it neat (with a ton of water, obviously), but I actually could. The flavor works out OK. The real problem is the harshness, which is quite excessive. Given the harshness, I think that I can't rate this too high, but the flavor could earn it a rating in the ballpark of 12 to 14. Considering the harshness though, I need to go much lower. This is a heck of a lot harsher than Beluga Noble and its flavor isn't as good either. It's sort of its own experience though and I can imagine use cases where someone wants more of a bite in a cocktail, in which case, a small amount of this might just be a good choice. It's very tough to place a rating on this because it has a clean flavor and the harshness would likely mostly disappear if it were used in moderation to spike a fruity cocktail to give it more punch, but this is just too painful to drink neat unless it is watered down near 40% ABV - and even then, it's extremely harsh. Considering all of the above, I can't ever see this going above an 11, but a 5 seems as low as I can imagine. That is one heck of a range. Still, I think this is more toward the high end of that range because there are situations that can benefit from the added warmth, viscosity, and punch. I'm now hovering in the 8 to 10 range. Most often, the outcome of that sort of deliberation would be a 9 - and I do admit that I haven't actually tried using this to spike fruit juice, so it may be way better than I imagine for that - but in this case, I'm going with 8. This is just too rough and the flavor is solid, but even at its best it doesn't amazing. I'll give it one last chance to earn a 9 by tossing a little bit in with some fruit juice. OK, so the high proof here is a huge boon for making fruit juice just have a bit more oomph. Other vodkas (Kirkland French and Beluga Noble) really watered down my mango lemonade (it was all I had). This kept its full flavor and added a rich savory note. Which didn't quite land correctly. Still, this was my favorite of the three, so I think that earns a 9. This still strikes me as very situational, but it was essentially fine in this situation. My bigger concern comes down to vodka as a mixer (i.e. why bother since it's so mild?), but I don't think I need to take that up here. 9.