A few days ago the temperature here in New England decided to jump above 50 degrees for more than an hour and my friend Bob and I decided to take advantage of it. We loaded up his 22-foot Pro Sport (the John Wayne) and motored out of Westbrook, Connecticut, and into Long Island Sound for an evening sunset cruise. We had all the required accessories: Nice weather, good tunes, maybe a cold drink. (Wait, we forgot the beautiful women? How could we forget the beautiful women?!? Key ingredient. Anyway, moving on.) As we got to the leeward side of Duck Island Bob dropped the hook while I dropped some ice cubes into rocks glasses and got a look at the bottle that showed up at my office a few days earlier: Yacht Club Vodka, which sports mahogany wood panels that are attached to the bottle with chromed hardware from Belgium, meant to be reminiscent of the old mahogany runabouts of the French Riviera. But appearances be damned, what about the taste? Light, fresh, and clean. It might be the five-time distillation process, might be fact that it’s made in Bordeaux, France, and everything from there just tastes better. Whatever alchemy the folks at Yacht Club Vodka are using, it works. I had a vodka soda, and I’m not sure if it was the sunset, being on the water, the weather, or a combination of it all, but dammit, for the first all year, it tasted like summer. Yacht Club Vodka, $29.99; www.yachtclubvodka.com
