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WASILLA, Alaska – Prepare your palate for carnivorous cocktails. The Alaska Distillery in Wasilla just recently launched its Smoked Salmon Flavored Vodka, about a year after the Seattle-based Black Rock Spirits introduced a bacon-flavored vodka. Both savory spirits were intended to complement Bloody Marys, but are finding wider uses among mixologists. "I think there was some madness and some drunkenness involved, honestly," said Toby Foster, an Alaska Distillery partner and the one charged with coming up with new flavors with Alaska themes.

A UC researcher proposes that taste is in the tongue of the beholder when it comes to vodka. Photos By: Ashley Kempher, photojournalist; video by Jay Yocis University of Cincinnati Professor Dale W. Schaefer, in the Chemical and Materials Engineering Department of UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science, is part of an international team of scientists studying to see if there is a scientific way to measure structure in vodkas. UC collaborated with scientists from Moscow State University. Since vodkas are 60 percent pure water and 40 percent pure ethanol (ethyl alcohol), many people conclude that vodkas are uniformly...

What is vodka eyeballing? A new fad among some kids in Europe may be spreading to the US. In online videos it is dubbed vodka eyeballing and now the claim is that some American teens have tried the odd way to get a buzz. It is just as it sounds - supposedly it is a shot of vodka into the eye. This bizarre new "trend" has found a home on YouTube and some say they are concerned for US kids as the claim is that it will get you a buzz quicker than taking a shot of vodka by mouth....

Even as drunken student antics go, it was, by any stretch of the imagination, a disturbing scene. Surrounded by cheering rugby players, applauded by fellow members of the university netball team, 19-year-old Melissa Fontaine tipped back her head and giggled as fellow drinkers in the Students' Union bar pulled apart her eyelids and allowed them to pour a shot of vodka into her left eye. 'Vodka eyeballing', as it is known in student circles, is the latest drinking craze to sweep through Britain's universities. Those who do it claim that it induces feelings of drunkenness at break-neck speeds, providing...

HARRISBURG, Pa.- The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's latest radio advertisement is urging the state's residents to get mom what she really wants for Mother's Day: vodka. The agency's ad, which joins a previous ad promoting wine as a Mother's Day gift, informs Pennsylvanians that vodka is available at affordable prices in several flavors, including cherry, strawberry kiwi and tropical punch, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Wednesday. "Treat her to the perfect Mother's Day cocktail this year," a voice says during the ad. "Try a Mother's Kiss mixed drink, made with equal parts ... strawberry kiwi vodka and lemonade." Officials described the...

Mmm Bacon...Flavored Vodka? By Richard Goldsmith - FOXNews.com America's favorite straight stuff gets an injection of flavor. Once upon a time, vodka was popular for being virtually tasteless, delivering all the punch of alcohol without all of that annoying flavor. It was the ultimate blank canvas, melding with pretty much any mixer a bartender could pair it with. As vodka popularity grew in the ‘80s and ‘90s, liquor distillers realized there was money to be made through product extensions, so companies dove in head first. Thus, the tidal wave of flavored vodkas was unleashed. Flavored vodkas have actually been around...

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev demanded Monday that sports officials step down over the country's dismal performance at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Russia, a traditional winter sports powerhouse, won just 15 medals -- with only three golds -- in one of its worst performances. Officials said before the games that 30 medals and a top-three finish in the medal standings was the target. You're one simple step away from your video Clicking above will upgrade your browser with the latest version of Microsoft Silverlight. With the Olympic flag being passed from Vancouver to Sochi, the Russian delegation provides a taste...

A farmer in Russia's Far East has been handed a suspended prison sentence for planting explosives in his field to ward off potato thieves.

For the first time since 1995, the Russian population has increased. It went up about 20,000, to 141.9 million. The growth was caused by a 4 percent decline in death rates, and more immigration (mostly ethnic Russians coming from countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union.) This migration caused a spurt of growth after the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, and population peaked in 1995 at 148.5 million. But low birth rates, and rising death rates, caused continual decline since then, until 2009. The government has improved public health, and made it easier to have children...

<p>MOSCOW – The price of the cheapest vodka on the Russian market more than doubled Friday as the government set a minimum price in an effort to fight rampant alcoholism.</p> <p>Drinking causes an extraordinary number of deaths in Russia, where male life expectancy is about 60 years, and it contributes to an array of economic and social problems.</p>

Russia introduced on Friday a minimum price of vodka in an effort to fight counterfeit alcohol production in the country. From January 1, any 0.5l vodka bottle selling at below 89 rubles (almost $3) will be outlawed. The price ban is one of the first government steps toward regulating the domestic alcohol market. First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said earlier other measures in the sphere would be accomplished by July 1, 2010. Theses include the licensing of alcohol supplies, the introduction of a unified excise duty on alcohol, and tougher responsibility for the production and marketing of fake vodka....

Turns out they're not "out there" after all. Those UFO sighting in Norway this morning weren't actually UFOs -- just a Russian missile test gone wrong. The Russian Defense Ministry admitted today that its Bulava intercontinental missile failed a test launch, following reports of unusual lights in Norway that caused an influx of UFO sightings. Russia's submarine-based Bulava (Mace), which is designed to carry multiple warheads up to 5,000 miles, failed its 13th test launch, something Alexander Khramchikhin, chief analyst at the Institute of Military and Political Analysis in Moscow, called "a catastrophe." "Billions of dollars have been flushed down...

Drinking coffee does not sober you up – and may actually further impair your judgement, new research suggests. The combination of alcohol and caffeine produces a potentially lethal mix that just makes it harder to realise you are actually drunk in the first place. And the study published in Behavioural Neuroscience suggests popular caffeinated energy drinks could also raise risks from intoxication rather than lessen them. "The myth about coffee's sobering powers is particularly important to debunk because the co-use of caffeine and alcohol could actually lead to poor decisions with disastrous outcomes. "People who have consumed only alcohol, who...

A 27-year-old man from northern Sweden has certain regrets about drinking a full bottle of vodka after waking up the morning after with a six inch penis tattooed on his leg, newspaper Aftonbladet reports. The man with the obscene tattoo, identified only as Joel, recalls little of the evening that led to the ink-filled art attack. "The last thing I remember is leaving my apartment," he told Aftonbladet. But friends were soon able to fill him in on all the gory details of a raucous May evening in Umeå. After hitting one of the town's nightspots, the group headed for...

CHELSEA Clinton is not getting married this year, despite constant rumors of impending nuptials. Maybe the former first daughter or her fiancé, Marc Mezvinsky, just isn't ready yet.

Russia is grappling with a major public health crisis in which residents are essentially drinking and smoking themselves to death, according to the country’s public health officials. About a million Russians die each year from alcohol- and smoking-related causes -- between 600,000 and 700,000 of those deaths are attributed to drinking alone, Andrei Demin, of Russia’s Public Health Association, told Fox News. “It’s threatening the future of the country,” he said. The problem? Unlike other countries, Russia has refused to levy hefty taxes on cigarettes and alcohol to discourage drinking and smoking. The resulting statistics are staggering: — The average...

MOSCOW, June 26 (Reuters) - Cheap and illicit alcohol kills more than half Russian men and women in their most productive years and the government must act urgently to reverse the trend, a study to be published in The Lancet at the weekend said. "Excessive alcohol consumption in Russia, particularly by men, has in several recent years caused more than half of all the deaths at ages of 15-54 years," the Lancet article said. The research conducted in three industrial cities -- Tomsk, Barnaul and Biysk -- said "excess mortality from liver cancer, throat cancer, liver disease, and pancreatic disease...

Alcohol kills more than half Russian men and women in their most productive years, according to new research. The international study found three quarters of deaths among men and half of deaths among women aged 15-54 could be attributed to alcohol abuse. Such a mortality rate for this age range is five times higher for men and three times higher for women when compared to Western Europe. Professor David Zaridze, who led the research, worked out that alcohol had killed three million in the country since the failed attempt to restrict sales in 1987. Some 30,000 people - twice the...

..A Penza man also had an apparent aversion to peeling potatoes, one that prompted his wife to hurl a knife into his eye in a fit of rage, according to Penza region news portal Pzn.ru. The description of the incident on Pzn.ru makes the wife sound like a professional knife-thrower. After the husband refused to peel the potatoes, the woman, from the Penza region town of Arbekov, grabbed a kitchen knife and whipped it at her spouse, the tip of the knife lodging directly in his eye socket. The husband displayed true devotion, waiting three days before seeking medical attention...

Tom Smith, the spirits director at Union Square Wines in Manhattan, says he doesn’t carry Popov in his store because he associates it with his days of waiting tables, when he used it to polish silverware. Even Diageo, the liquor conglomerate that owns the Popov brand, seems reluctant to own up to it. Popov, which can sell for less than $9 a 750-milliliter bottle, isn’t mentioned on its Web site, and when asked about the brand, a company spokeswoman kept trying to steer the conversation toward pricier spirits. And it’s not just vodka that has been “popularized.” The trade-down effect...