Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition awarded Kröl the Best Vodka Award at this year’s ceremony.
The unflavored recipe Kröl came out on top of 120 other spirits in this year’s competition. This has been an amazing year for Kröl with being attached to many Hollywood movie premieres, festival celebrations, and celebrities.
The history of Kröl Vodka begins when Marie Kröl was only a small child when the Nazi rolled through her small town during their occupation of Poland in World War II. Like so many other occupations, this one left the town decimated. Along with the town, the Nazi razed Jan’s family home and the vodka distillery that had been owned and operated by five previous generations of the Kröl clan. When the Nazi killed
Anthony Kröl, Marie’s father, not only was Jan left an orphan but the vodka crafted by family would cease to exist. Marie was able to save a few pieces of her family’s heritage when a Polish woman that looked out for children orphaned by war rescued her. Fortunately for the vodka drinking world, Marie saved the recipe that was near and dear to the family.
Marie’s grandson, Philip, was seven years old when he first visited his grandmother in Poland. From that early age, Philip remembers the stories of his ancestors and their love and diligence of their craft of making vodka. Marie would often tell Philip of her father and her father’s father before him what the vodka meant to the family and the pride they took in creating a drink that was second to none. Philip, with his cousins in tow, would often spend hours playing in the rye fields and among the ruins of the old distillery once in full operation.
As Philip became of drinking age, he began to notice a large difference in the quality of vodka sold here in America versus what was made and served in the homeland of his family. With the origins of vodka being from Poland, Philip realized that to find a truly great vodka one only had to look as far as the country that perfected the drink. Listening to the wisdom of his mother “Don’t give up, have a dream”, Philip left his job at a movie studio to pursue the resurrection of the family business and Kröl vodka. Armed with the stories of his grandmother and a family recipe that dated back over 100 years, Philip set out to Poland to learn what there is to learn about making vodka. Much of 2002 and 2003 was spent in research and development, tweaking history with modern techniques to deliver a vodka second to none in its smoothness. Spending four to five months at a time in fields of his childhood, Philip and his team would make a new batch throughout each day and night; often sampling in the wee hours of the morning until the right blend of late harvest rye was discovered.
In 2005 using grains from Philip’s father’s family’s field, the recipe that had traveled through time and a distillery in Warsaw dating back to 1897, perfection was crafted as the first bottle of the new generation of Kröl vodka rolled off the line. The purest vodka on the market today, Kröl demands that the late harvest rye remains untreated and as pristine as the pure Polish mountain spring water with which they are distilled. Kröl is distilled four times to eliminate all impurities and to capture nuances of flavor unique to the spirit. Kröl is then filtered six times until it is sheer, smooth perfection on the palate.
Tripling their production and sales in the short two years that the vodka has been available, Kröl is poised to take the discriminating vodka world by storm. Awards and accolades for the vodka are abundant with its most recent Gold and Silver medal wins at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2007 for the Original and Lemon-Raspberry versions respectively. In addition to the awards, Kröl has become popular with the Hollywood crowd. The brand made its debut at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, where it was sipped in specialty cocktails by festival-goers including Terrence Howard, Jessica Biel, and Adrien Grenier. Just this past January Kröl once again had a presence at the Sundance Film Festival where the brand hosted a dinner for the cast of the film Smart People, attendees included Sarah Jessica Parker and Dennis Quaid. Since then it has been the vodka of choice at huge events such as US Weekly/Rolling Stones 2006 Oscars party and at hot parties such as JC Chasez’ birthday hosted by Justin Timberlake. Kröl Vodka is also a strong supporter of charities and world organizations, most recently donating all of the product for MySpace’s Rock For Darfur Launch Event, which benefited Oxfam America’s Sudan Relief Fund. Kröl will also be take part in the Global Green event hosted which Salma Hayek debuted her post baby body. And during the year’s Gay Pride Festivities, Kröl was vodka of choice.
On the verge of national distribution by the later of this year, Kröl is destined to be the vodka to watch!
