About VodkaBuzz

Our Mission

The raison d’être of VodkaBuzz is to keep people from drinking cheap, shoddy or overpriced, pretentious vodkas. We intend to do this by drinking all the vodka we can get our hands on and telling you what we think. At VodkaBuzz, we love our vodka. We want you to love your vodka. We are humanitarians. Really.

How We Rate

Initially, we rated on an absolute scale. That is, each vodka had a unique number on a scale. After a year, that got to be a bit unwieldy. It required comparing vodkas that we may have had only once over a year ago. So, we swapped to a more common rating system.

We evaluate each vodka on two merits: quality and bang for the buck. Each merit is rated on a 0-5 point scale (zero being the worst and five being the best). This is represented by shots of vodka. We also allow users to rate vodka on the same 0-5 scale. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to get the top five vodkas or the best vodka, but the reviews are a lot easier to do.

Why Call It VodkaBuzz?

The short answer is that I like the look of the glyphs in the word (yeah, design geek here) and I like the double entendre. There is a longer version.

This site was being formulated for a long time. Originally, it was called VodkaSnob. I was going to register VodkaSnob.com in March 2006 but I didn’t. In May, I was going to try again, but it was registered. Since I didn’t want any branding issues, I registered VodkaBuzz.com. The idea was that it would be vodka news (or “the buzz” for slang, like that Jesus Christ Superstar song), but it was also about drinking vodka and getting a vodka buzz. So, it was a nice double entendre. I found out later that the original domain was being squatted on. So, I got VodkaSnob.net (just in case) in August 2008, since there were no branding issues. It turns out, while I was designing, I liked how VodkaBuzz looked better in Palatino Linotype than VodkaSnob (the “S” looks like it’s going to fall over), even though I like the term VodkaSnob a lot.

Who’s Involved

I am Robert Brodrecht. This site is my site. But, I like to involve my friends when I can. It’s been less often that I can get others involved, unfortunately.

How The Site Was Made

I designed and programmed the site with PHP, HTML 5.0, CSS, and JavaScript on top of WordPress. I coded everything in Smultron by hand. I tried to make this site as accessible as possible, and everything has valid, standard-based markup. Yes, it rocks. Totally a lot.

What Else?

The site was offocially launched March 10th, 2008 in Breckenridge, Colorado.