Once upon a time, long long ago, I was a graduate student with no more sense about drinking than I had when I was attending college frat parties. Intimidated by the bold flavors of liquors like gin and whisk(e)y I, like so many others, took refuge in vodka. Being nearly flavorless, vodka is a perfect gateway alcohol—you can drink without having to think about what will or won’t make the vodka taste good, because it isn’t going to affect things much at all. Which is why, I suppose, I found vodka martinis lacking (well, that and the crappy vermouth), and turned my attention to a vodka martini that actually tasted like something: the Dirty Martini. I don’t care to remember just how many Dirty Martinis I consumed in my nascent cocktailian stage, but there were a lot of them. Embarrassing but true.

Moving forward a few years, I’ve had nary a thought about vodka martinis of any stripe for quite a while; it’s gin or nothing at my house. I don’t drink much vodka at all anymore, and mostly keep it around to preserve homemade syrups and for mixing Bloody Marys (though Chuck did enlighten us about the magical properties of Beefeater in the Red Snapper). Enter, then, two convergent sample products that appeared on my doorstep: Sobieski Vodka and Dirty Sue Olive Juice.

To test them both, we made a round of Dirty Martinis using Sobieski Vodka and Dirty Sue, per the recommended proportions that came with the olive juice:

3 oz Sobieski vodka
¾ oz Dirty Sue Olive Juice

Shake over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with—what else?—olives.

Granted, vodka is not high on my list of things to sample, but the Sobieski ads amused me. I was inclined to give it a shot because it was pleasantly free from gimmickry and, being made in Poland, seemed like it might be more interesting that the high-end novelty vodkas that have hit the market in the past year. Though I can’t say I will run out and buy a bottle of Sobieski (or any other vodka, because I don’t go through it that fast), this was a pretty excellent specimen of the genre. It has a very mild flavor and pleasant texture—basically, exactly what you want in a vodka. The real kicker here, though, is the price. It averages just about two dollars more than Smirnoff for a 750ml, but is easily a better vodka than bottles priced twice as much. It’s a very good vodka at an exceptional price which, at my house, makes everything taste better.

The Dirty Sue was sent over by Eric Tecosky, Dirty Sue’s mastermind and a bartender at Jones in West Hollywood. While I mostly find pre-bottled “mixes” to be a lackluster waste of time, Dirty Sue is different in that it is not a bottle of brine, but a bottle of olive juice. This seems like worthless distinction until you actually taste it—where the brining water from a jar of olives is super salty with a light olive flavor, the olive juice tastes like an olive with just a bit of a salty note. I happen to love olives, so the flavor was a big hit with me and the fresh taste was a very pleasant surprise. I won’t be spending much time drinking dirty martinis (what was I thinking?) but Dirty Sue is definitely a quality product and I don’t see why it couldn’t be used in other cocktails.