Drink with the Fishes

Have you ever sat at a nice restaurant with a delicious salmon dish in front of you, and thought to yourself, "Man, I wish I could drink this"? Well, my friend, you are in luck. And weird.

The Alaska Distillery in Wasilla just recently launched its Smoked Salmon Flavored Vodka, about a year after the Seattle-based Black Rock Spirits introduced a bacon-flavored vodka.

Both savory spirits were intended to complement Bloody Marys, but are finding wider uses among mixologists.

I was completely on-board with bacon-infused vodka (how could I not be? It's bacon, son!), but I'll admit this one has me a little skeptical. But there still remains a significant adventurist streak in me, and I'm eager to get my first taste of this strange, but intriguing new creation. However, if you're someone who's hesitant about the taste of salmon-flavored vodka, keep one thing in mind: the liquid that they pour into your glass is the final product. Imagine how much worse it would be to be an Alaska Distillery taste tester.

Foster and Scotti MacDonald, another partner, said the current formula took 48 tries, and some of the first 47 attempts were downright disgusting.

"Definitely the first few times we had our heave bucket close by," MacDonald said. "It was pretty bad, and you know, greasy."

I bet "vodka distillery taste tester" sounded like a dream job before reading that.