Tim,
I know your questions were directed to the Admins, but I am a vodka drinker with friends in the liquor business, and here's what they told me.
Most vodkas now are distilled from mixed grains, including wheat. Stoly, Sky, Absolut and other premium vodkas all use blended grains; if you want a pure potato vodka, Chopin from Poland is a good choice
To my palate, the quality of vodka matters more when drinking it straight.
Drinking good vodka also means lower health risks. Cheap vodkas contain higher amounts of "cogeners," poisons which naturally appear during the distillation process. The longer the vodka has been distilled and the more times it has been filtered, the better it will be for your body.
In a mixed drink such as a Bloody Mary, I think vodka quality matters a bit less, although a bad vodka can ruin the drink. I think that like rums, the only way to really taste the vodka is straight; a good vodka will have a clean, slightly astringent aftertaste and will not burn on the way down.
I too would like to know where in the Gulch one can get a truly fine bloody Mary. I suspect that this is hard to find.
I never drink cheap vodka; the poisons will blossom your nose and kill your liver. I don't need Stoly...Smirnoff will do just fine for me, but I won't drink cheaper brands (Popov, Bell Boy, Karkov, Fleishman....even Seagram's brand of vodka sucks IMHO).
Now, with all this Stoly talk, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Kettle 1, Belvedere and all the wonderful but obscure "former Soviet Union" brands from Georgia, Chechnia, Poland and Russia. There's some wonderful stuff out here; go sometime to a party at your local Russian restaurant and waste yourself tasting.
I wonder what brand Circus drinks (those mini-vodka bottles...)
