OUR STORY
I founded this brand with my amazing wife Emma Krokdal. It’s been an extremely hard work and also a fantastic experience to be working together on something we both love. It’s been exciting to watch our baby grow up and finally come of age.
It all started back in 2019, when I was dating Emma, having taken her up to the Four Seasons in Santa Barbara for the weekend. We were sitting at the bar and I complained that I couldn’t find a vodka I liked. I’m from Sweden and Emma from Norway so we both have some experience with clear spirts, being part of old Scandinavian culture.
After listening to another complaint, Emma said;” You’re a chemical engineer, you played a Russian a few times, you’re from Sweden. Why don't you make your own?” After a laugh, I glanced at the vodka section behind the bar and it seemed much more boring than the tequilas or whiskies. So then and there we decided to create our own brand: “the smoothest, best tasting vodka on the market".
It’s been 6 years of creating our vodka, designing the bottle, coming up the name and the brand identity. Emma and I have been working together on this every day for all these years now - and I believe that’s why people feel the love and authenticity when they try Hard Cut.
The name comes from film editing, when you make a ‘hard cut’ from say, LA to New York. Our bottle is also ‘hard cut’ like a diamond - and some (or most…) of the movie characters I’ve played are ‘hard cut’ men.
Emma said
“Our vodka is like Dolph in a bottle”.
At least I finally got some use out of my Masters Degree in Chemical Engineering.
TASTING NOTES
APPEARANCE:
Crystal-clear, diamond-like clarity.
NOSE:
Clean condition, muscular intensity, characteristics of rich vanilla, hints of apple, and faith noises of fennel-anise.
PALATE:
Rich mouthfeel revealing a palate of luxurious creaminess, more pronounced crips green apple with hints of vanilla and fennel.
FINISH:
Lengthy, satisfying finish with roundness departing, leaving a lingering note of balanced alcohol.
“AN ASSERTIVE, RICH, CREAMY PALATE, PROGRESSING SEAMLESSLY INTO A LENGTHY, SMOOTH FINISH. ”
PRODUCTION NOTES
Hard Cut Vodka is distilled from American-grown Idaho russet potatoes, one of the most expensive bases to make vodka from, as well as one of the most traditional.
The mash is long-fermented for up to five days (fermentation is usually just 48 hours for grain vodkas) to create maximum flavour and Hard Cut’s signature balanced smoothness.
After high altitude desillation in a state-of-the-art fractional column, the distillate is purified using reverse osmosis filtration and blended with Snake River Aquifer water to be bottled at Hard Cut Vodka’s muscular ABV of 45% (90 Proof.
LESS THAN 1% OF AMERICAN VODKAS USE POTATOES
HCV’s distillery is part of the wind energy program and a large percentage our distillery waste is recycled into biogas for a local dairy farm.
All the power to make Hard Cut is from wind and hydroelectric. DRINC has been a visionary member of Rocky Mountain Power's Blue Skies Wind program since 2007.
All the water is from our well in the Snake River aquifer and all the by products from production are reused.
