Marketing versus reality
How many times is vodka distilled?
Labels love to boast with numbers like triple or quintuple distilled. Technically this often means little, since modern column stills achieve high purity in a single, continuous pass that corresponds to several classic distillation runs.
What the label is really trying to say
When a bottle advertises fivefold distillation, it usually doesn't mean the alcohol has run through a copper still five separate times from scratch. Often the producer counts individual separation stages within a column, or successive filtration steps that aren't technically distillation at all. To a layperson, the number still sounds impressive. That's exactly what the wording on the label is aiming for.
No binding legal standard for the term exists in either the EU spirits regulation or American law under 27 CFR 5. Producers are relatively free to define the number however they like, as long as the claim isn't deliberately misleading, which makes comparisons between brands difficult. Two bottles with the same number may have been produced through completely different technical processes. A direct comparison between brands is therefore barely possible without knowing the exact process behind it.
How many passes a column replaces
A modern rectification column with many plates achieves, in a single continuous pass, a purity that a simple pot still would need several separate runs to reach. The 96 percent mark from the previous stage is already the technical ceiling for simple distillation and rectification combined. More purity simply can't be extracted this way.
When this column-distilled alcohol is claimed to have been distilled an additional three or four times, that often refers to a second, smaller distillation run for fine-tuning, or simply to marketing language. The practical purity gain over the already-rectified alcohol is small in such cases. Still, the number on the label remains a popular selling point.
Where multiple distillation runs actually make a difference
Things look different at small, artisanal pot still distilleries. There, a second or third distillation run genuinely means the raw spirit passes through the copper still again, with the heads and tails cut away once more each time. Here, every pass noticeably increases purity. The effort required is correspondingly high. Small batches can also be monitored more closely than large, continuously running column stills.
For such producers, the number of distillation runs is a genuine technical characteristic that shows up in effort, time, and price. The difference between one pass and three is often clearly perceptible in flavor, unlike with already highly pure column-still alcohol. This difference is exactly what justifies the higher price here. Customers are, in this case, also paying for real extra effort, not just for the brand name.
How to read marketing claims
When you read a number on a label, it's better understood as a producer's positioning statement than as an objective mark of quality. It says little about whether a column or a pot still was used, or how many genuine separation stages actually stand behind it. A high number alone guarantees nothing about quality. Above all, it tells you something about the brand's chosen market position.
More telling, usually, are details about the raw material used, the distillation method itself, or independent designations of origin such as the protected term Polska Wódka. Bare figures on distillation frequency are hard to assess objectively without further detail. When in doubt, a tasting reveals more than any number on a label.
A simple test for purchasing decisions
When you see a claim like triple or quintuple distilled, it's worth asking whether the producer also provides details about the raw material, the distillation method, or the source of the water. If such details are entirely absent, the number usually stands alone and adds little to your assessment.
If, on the other hand, several concrete details appear side by side, such as the grain variety, the still used, and the filter material, a much clearer picture of the actual production process emerges. The single number then becomes part of a larger, more coherent whole.