what do diamonds filter, anyway? (or how I learned to stop worrying and love Crystal Head Vodka even though I wouldn't pay for it)

Super-premium vodka is bullshit. It's important to get that out of the way right now - you're welcome to disagree with me, but you're wrong. As wrong as a creationist denying climate change whilst adding 2 and 2 and coming up with 7.

Grey Goose, Belvedere, Chopin, Absolut Level, Smirnoff Penka, Ciroc, Uluvka, Stolichnaya Elit, and that ridiculous mammoth tusk were all created to exploit society's ridiculous compulsion to spend more on something stupid in hopes of buying an 'image'. The idea that a liquid whose main purpose in the universe is to be as neutral and vapid as possible, and that the more neutral and vapid it is, the more exclusive and expensive it must become? That reminds me of a certain Hans Christian Andersen story. Hint: it's not The Little Mermaid.

If similar taste factors were used to appraise beer, Bud Light would be the most rare and expensive beer in the world, sold in zircon-studded cans individually wrapped in faux-felt adorned with a stitched print of the St Louis skyline. Think about that for a second. Have you stopped shuddering? Good.

Oh but they use the best ingredients…

Why? So that they can extract all trace elements of character and flavour from them? How important is your ultra amazing water source after 5-10 distillations? Is potato vodka better for when you get wasted and grab a bag of chips on the way home? Is it better to have a cider chaser with apple vodka?

It's all marketing, marketing without substance and marketing without substance is bullshit, pure and simple.

Which is why I fucking love the diamond-filtered, conspiracy-theoried, purified-by-aliens gibberish that is Crystal Head. Because in an ocean of grain-neutral, marketing-driven, multi-national, ridiculously packaged, over-priced, over-hyped bullshit, Crystal Head rises like a leviathan, out-purifying, out-packaging, out-bullshitting every single one of them. And who's doing this? Dan-Fucking-Aykroyd, that's who. Elwood Blues is selling snake oil; Mr Conehead has sewn a new pair of threads for the emperor. Big business marketing bullshit versus someone genuinely creative and surprise, surprise, the latter has a far more interesting line of fertiliser. They're selling image and he's selling a story. He's got my money.

Or, he would, if I ever felt like spending £50 on a bottle of vodka.