Vodka is the spirit everyone orders and nobody defends. So let us defend it, and settle how to drink vodka properly. Good vodka was never meant to taste of nothing: drink it very cold but not frozen, neat in a small glass or in a proper Martini, and choose it by what it is made from. Rye for spice, wheat for softness, potato for weight. The rest is detail, and the detail is where the pleasure hides.

There is a particular sneer reserved for vodka. It is the drink people order when they claim not to care what they drink, the clear stuff at the back of the party, the thing you mix with something louder so you never have to taste it. For two decades the industry encouraged exactly that, selling purity as the whole point and running competitions over how many times a spirit had been distilled, as though the goal were to strip out every last trace of character. We drank the marketing. We decided vodka was meant to be silent, and then we blamed it for having nothing to say.

How vodka talked itself into a corner

The modern idea of vodka as flavourless is a surprisingly recent invention, and largely a sales pitch. The old drinking cultures of Poland, Russia and the Nordic countries never treated it as neutral. There, vodka is a table spirit, poured ice cold alongside herring, black bread, pickles and smoked fish, and nobody expects it to vanish on the tongue. It was the Western luxury boom of the 1990s and 2000s that rebranded the category around purity and packaging, all frosted glass and endless filtration, and taught a generation to pay more for less. The better producers quietly ignored all of it and kept making vodka with a point of view.

It was never meant to taste of nothing

Taste two good vodkas side by side and the myth collapses. The base ingredient does most of the talking. Rye gives pepper and a dry, bread-crust snap, which is why Belvedere, distilled from Polish rye, carries a savoury spine that stands up in a Martini rather than disappearing into it. Wheat is softer and rounder, all clean silk, the house style of the big French names. Potato, the hardest road of the three, makes something fuller and faintly creamy that coats the glass. None of these is flavourless. They are quiet the way a very good white shirt is quiet: the quality is in the cut, not the noise.

How to actually drink vodka

Start with temperature, because it changes everything. Vodka wants to be cold but not frozen solid. A long spell in the fridge, or twenty minutes in the freezer, thickens the texture and rounds off any burn while leaving the aromatics intact. Leave it in the freezer for days and you numb it completely, which is fine for a careless shot and a waste of anything good. Pour a decent one into a small chilled glass, sip it the Eastern European way beside something salty, and you will taste exactly why those cultures never needed it to hide.

After that it is the most obliging spirit in the house. A vodka Martini, cold and bracing, with a lemon twist or a brine-soaked olive. A long vodka soda with plenty of lemon when you want something clean and low. The vodka highball, barely more than good spirit, cold tonic or soda and a glass full of ice, is the most underrated drink at any party. And yes, the Espresso Martini, the drink that simply refuses to leave, lives or dies on the quality of the vodka hiding under the coffee.

The one to pour this party season

This is vodka's season, whatever the snobs say. The Martini is back on every good list, the Espresso Martini is the most ordered cocktail at any December party, and a cold bottle waiting in the freezer is the easiest hosting insurance there is. For everyday pouring and the house Martini, Belvedere Organic at £36.99 is hard to beat: rye-driven, genuinely characterful, built for mixing. When the occasion calls for a splurge, Grey Goose Altius at £119.99 is the house at full stretch, a single-estate French wheat vodka of real silk and depth, the kind of bottle you pour neat and slowly. One for the party, one for the person you are quietly trying to impress.

If you can only make room for one, let the night decide. A crowd, a shaker and a long evening ahead: the Belvedere, every time. A quiet nightcap, a single beautiful glass, no mixer in sight: reach for the Altius and take your time over it.

If you remember one thing

Drink it cold, not frozen, and buy it by what it is made from. Do that and vodka stops being the spirit you order when you have given up and becomes one you reach for on purpose. If you are rethinking the clear spirits in your cabinet this winter, our case for gin in winter is the natural next pour. Vodka has been the grown-up in the freezer the whole time. The least we can do is taste it properly.