Award Winning Infused Vodka

At this point, you’re probably overwhelmed by hundreds of options and commercials from corporate liquor brands selling you on better water sources, better filtration, a billion times distilled, and on and on. The marketing has gotten loud, and much of it says the same thing in different fonts. So we dug a little deeper into one brand to see why all of a sudden everyone seems to be talking about Infuse Spirits’ approach to this whole vodka thing.

What follows is a closer look at the philosophy behind a small-batch infused vodka — why real ingredients matter, how infusion actually works, and what it means for the way your drink tastes and how you feel the next morning.

Key Takeaways

• Infuse Vodka flavors and colors its spirit using only real fruit and spices steeped inside the bottle — no syrups, dyes, or glycerin.
• Because the flavor comes from fruit rather than sugar and chemicals, the result is naturally low or no sugar and a cleaner-tasting pour.
• The brand started as a genuine garage operation, born from home-steeping experiments with grocery-store ingredients.
• Every bottle is hand-packed and takes a full 30 days to infuse before it’s ready to drink — a slow, century-old method applied to vodka.
• The used fruit is still fresh and edible after infusion, and it gets donated to a community service agency rather than thrown away.
• Quality control is overseen at every stage of production by the founder and CEO on every run.

1. That’s REAL Fruit in the Bottle

Not only does it look cool, but those fruit and spices floating around in the bottle are very much real and serve a very important purpose — they are beautiful and happen to be the only thing coloring and flavoring the vodka. Mind. Blown.

This is a bigger deal than it sounds. Walk down the flavored-spirit aisle of most liquor stores and you’ll find bottles that are perfectly, uniformly colored — a shade of pink or blue that no actual strawberry or blueberry has ever produced in nature. That consistency is usually the work of added coloring and flavor compounds, engineered to taste the same in every batch, every year, in every market.

Infuse takes the opposite approach. The color you see is the color the fruit gives off as it steeps. The flavor you taste is the flavor the fruit releases into the spirit. Nothing is added to standardize it, which means the bottle is a small window into what real ingredients actually look like when they’re left to do their job.

There’s a practical side to this too. When you can see the fruit, you can see what you’re drinking. There’s no guessing about what went into the bottle, because it’s right there in front of you.

2. Their Vodka Is Fun and Fascinating — and Naturally Low in Sugar

Infuse Vodka is all natural and has low or no sugar. Because the fruit is the only thing flavoring it, you get all the taste but none of the extra sugar and coloring from almost all other flavored spirits. If that natural approach appeals to you, our guide to the best natural flavored vodka explains what to look for beyond the label.

Do you know what that means? Kiss your hangover fears goodbye — this stuff is clean, tasty, and most of all, made with love.

It’s worth unpacking why this matters, because “flavored vodka” has a reputation problem, and it’s largely deserved. Many mass-market flavored spirits lean heavily on added sugar, glycerin, and artificial flavoring to hit a consistent, candy-like profile. That approach delivers a big, immediate hit of sweetness — and, for a lot of drinkers, a rougher morning after.

When flavor comes from real fruit instead, the sweetness is subtler and more natural. You’re tasting the fruit itself rather than a syrup built to imitate it. For anyone who has sworn off flavored vodka because it tasted like dessert or perfume, this is the category reset.

A few things this means in practice:

• Cleaner sipping. The spirit works neat or on the rocks, not just buried in a mixer.
• Better cocktails. Real fruit flavor layers with other ingredients instead of fighting them.
• Less sugar creep. You’re not stacking hidden sweetness on top of your tonic, soda, or juice.

3. This Garage Startup Is as Real as the Fruit Floating in the Bottle

The young entrepreneur who started this company began in — you guessed it — his grandmother’s garage. Seth would grab random ingredients at the grocery store and steep them into vodka. There was even an oatmeal attempt.

That oatmeal experiment is a good reminder that infusion is a process of trial and error, and that the people who get good at it are the ones willing to make a few bad batches along the way. It wasn’t long before Seth realized that the combination of higher quality vodka and real ingredients would be the key to a better tasting flavored spirit.

That insight is the whole ballgame. Infusion doesn’t fix bad base spirit — it amplifies whatever is already there. Start with something harsh and you get harsh flavor with fruit on top. Start with something clean and the fruit has room to shine. The garage years were essentially a long, informal education in that principle, and the brand that emerged from them was built on it.

4. They Can Read Your Mind

While the world was shunning overplayed cake and whipped cream flavored vodkas, and watching whisky take over the scene, Infuse was quietly thinking about the future. They had figured out in 2013 what brands in 2016 were just starting to understand — women (and men) do not want chemical-fueled, perfume-smelling spirits anymore.

Even the big boys like Smirnoff are catching on by imitating “real fruit” juice, but they still fall short of the authenticity that Infuse has been offering from day one.

This is the arc of the whole craft-spirits movement in miniature. For years, the flavored category chased novelty — the stranger the flavor, the better the shelf presence. Then drinkers started reading labels, and the conversation shifted from “what flavor is it?” to “what’s actually in it?”

That shift is why you now see major brands advertising real fruit, natural flavors, and simpler ingredient lists. It’s a genuine improvement over where the category was. But there’s a difference between a spirit flavored with real fruit and a spirit flavored to taste like real fruit. One is an ingredient. The other is an imitation of one. Infuse has been on the ingredient side of that line since the beginning.

5. Goodness Comes From Buying This Booze

Since the Infuse Spirits process yields usable, fresh, edible fruit, Infuse offers to donate all of its fruit to ULAN — a community service agency. The company uses hundreds of pounds of fruit, and the leftovers supply local families and children in desperate need of the nutritious fruits they would not otherwise be receiving.

Think about what that says about the process. After a full month of steeping, the fruit is still food. It hasn’t been chemically stripped, boiled down, or turned into an industrial byproduct. It’s fruit that has given up some of its flavor to the vodka and is still perfectly good to eat.

That’s a useful test for any infused product, honestly. If the ingredient is still edible after infusion, it was real to begin with. If it isn’t, it probably wasn’t.

6. They Take This Vodka Business Very Seriously

Upholding the integrity and quality of their vodka goes before anything else, which is why quality control is overseen at every stage of production by their CEO and founder, at every production run.

That level of involvement is unusual at scale, and it’s the kind of thing that’s easy to take for granted until you taste a batch that’s off. Small-batch production has real advantages — attention, consistency of intent, willingness to reject a run that doesn’t meet the standard — but only if someone is actually paying attention. Here, that someone is the person whose name is on the company.

For a drinker, the practical takeaway is simple: when the person who founded the brand is standing over every run, the odds of a disappointing bottle go down considerably.

7. They Got It Right

You enjoy tea, right? Just like tea, Infuse Vodka is a natural infusion, which means no syrups, dyes, or glycerin. After hand-placing the fruits and spices in every bottle, it takes a full 30 days to infuse before the finished vodkas are ready to drink.

This century-old method is finally being applied to vodka, and before you can blink, you’ll be drinking some Infuse and understanding why it’s so darn delicious.

The tea comparison is the clearest way to understand what’s happening in the bottle. When you brew tea, you’re extracting flavor from a real plant into water over time. Infusion works the same way, except the liquid is spirit and the extraction takes a month instead of a few minutes. Cold extraction like this is gentler than heat, which is part of why the resulting flavor reads as fresh rather than cooked or jammy.

It also explains the patience involved. Thirty days is a long time to wait for anything in a world of instant everything, and it’s the reason the process can’t simply be rushed or scaled by dumping in flavor concentrate. The timeline is the method.

How to Drink It

Because the flavor is built from real ingredients rather than sugar syrup, infused vodka is more versatile than most flavored spirits. A few directions worth trying:

• Neat or over ice. The best way to understand what the fruit is actually doing. Serve it cold and sip slowly.
• With soda or tonic. A neutral mixer lets the fruit lead instead of competing with it.
• In a simple highball. Infused vodka, soda water, a squeeze of citrus, and a garnish that echoes whatever is in the bottle.
• In place of unflavored vodka in classics. A fruit-infused spirit can put a new spin on a mule, a martini variation, or a spritz.
• As a base for batch cocktails. Because it’s already flavored, you can build a crowd-pleasing punch with fewer ingredients and less added sugar.

The general rule: the cleaner the mixer, the more you taste the infusion. Sugary mixers will bury it.

Where to Find It

We know, you’re sold. But you’re thinking, where can I find Infuse? Lucky for you, it’s available all over California, as well as select retailers in Texas and Nevada. Even better, you can get Infuse almost anywhere by ordering online.

In fact, you can use the promo code INFUSE2016 at www.lovescotch.com to save $6.00 off the shipping and handling costs and order Infuse Vodka online.

Want to learn more? Visit the full website to watch the founder’s video, read up on the amazing flavors currently offered, and experience the next generation of vodka that is reinventing what it means to be “flavored.”

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes Infuse Vodka different from other flavored vodkas?

The flavor and color come entirely from real fruit and spices steeped inside the bottle — no syrups, dyes, or glycerin. Most flavored spirits rely on added sugar, artificial flavoring, and coloring to achieve a consistent taste. Infuse lets the actual ingredients do the work, which is why you can see them floating in the bottle.

Is Infuse Vodka low in sugar?

Yes. Because the fruit is the only thing flavoring the spirit, the result is naturally low or no sugar, depending on the expression. That’s a meaningful difference from flavored spirits that use added sugar and glycerin to build a sweet, candy-like profile.

How long does the infusion process take?

A full 30 days. The fruits and spices are hand-placed into every bottle, and the spirit steeps until the finished vodka is ready to drink. It’s the same slow, cold-extraction principle behind brewing tea, just stretched out over a month.

What happens to the fruit after it’s infused?

It’s donated. Because the process leaves the fruit fresh and edible, Infuse gives it to ULAN, a community service agency, which supplies local families and children with nutritious fruit they might not otherwise receive. Hundreds of pounds of fruit move through the process.

Can I drink Infuse Vodka neat, or is it only for mixing?

Both work well. Because the flavor comes from real ingredients rather than sugar syrup, it holds up neat or over ice, and it also mixes cleanly with soda, tonic, or citrus without turning cloying. The cleaner the mixer, the more of the infusion you’ll taste.

Where can I buy Infuse Vodka?

It’s available throughout California, plus select retailers in Texas and Nevada. It can also be ordered online from almost anywhere — and you can use promo code INFUSE2016 at www.lovescotch.com to save $6.00 off shipping and handling.

Be well.