Puriste Premium Vodka No. 1 by Hillinger & Kracher

Puriste comes from Austria, created under the direction of winemaker Leo Hillinger and Alois Kracher with a single-minded focus on clarity. The base is local wheat, a soft grain that gives a rounded, gentle body, paired with high spring water drawn from the Austrian Alps. The spirit is distilled six times, an unusually high count that strips away rough congeners and fusel character to leave a particularly clean and deep core. That combination of mountain water, regional wheat and repeated distillation is what earned the bottling a double gold medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2008.

The nose is clean and restrained with a fresh cereal lift. The palate is rich for something so pure, with clear wheat notes and a soft mouthfeel, running into a long finish that holds onto that grain character. A spirit built this deliberately for purity is best judged cold and undiluted, so chill the bottle thoroughly and pour it neat into a small frozen glass alongside a few oysters: the brine and minerality meet the clean wheat body and show off the work that went into it.