[HYPER MOLD]
[CULTURE]
[CHI CHI]
[VODKA]
Three phases. One obsession. A vodka you can feel on the way down.
Some vodka is built to vanish. This one was built to arrive.
Chi Chi has a disco soul. A little polished, a little playful, a little too much. But swagger has to be earned somewhere, and ours is earned in the making. We went to sake for the culture, to Caribbean rum for the thinking, and to the kitchen for the nerve. What came back is a koji vodka with texture where most have none. We call it Hyper Mold.
THE QUIET WORK BEHIND THE LOUD PART
[WHY BOTHER]
Texture is the whole argument.
Vodka spent a long time being judged on what it had removed. Chi Chi is built on what it keeps. Weight, gloss, a body that holds its shape when the ice starts working and the second half of the drink arrives.
None of that happens by accident, and none of it happens quickly. You cannot filter texture into a spirit. You have to build it in, phase by phase, before it ever meets the still.
We were not chasing smoother. We were chasing weight in the glass.
[THE RESULT]
The Ice Cream Effect.
Protein broken down into amino acids. Fat carried through the run instead of stripped out of it. Between them they give the spirit a velvety, melt-on-the-tongue weight that does not thin out under ice, under citrus, or under a bartender in a hurry.
It is the reason a Chi Chi highball still tastes like a drink at the bottom of the glass. It is also the reason people put it down and immediately pick it up again.
Feel it once and the name explains itself.
STRUCTURE YOU CAN TASTE WITHOUT BEING TOLD
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NOSE
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PALATE
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FINISH
The specs
[THE DISTILLERY]
Made by people you can actually go and find.
Chi Chi is made at 11 Woodward Street, Wellington, in a small city distillery with a copper still called Agnes sitting in the window and a bar on the other side of the glass. Mikey Ball runs the spirit side. You can come and drink it where it is made, which is more than most bottles can offer.
Mikey Ball, Head Distiller
[ASK THE OBVIOUS QUESTIONS]
What is koji vodka?
Koji vodka is vodka made using koji, the culture behind sake, miso and soy sauce. In Chi Chi, koji produces enzymes that break starch down into sugar and protein down into amino acids, building texture and body into the spirit rather than filtering character out of it.
What is Chi Chi Vodka made from?
A wheat neutral grain spirit, high-oil coconut flesh, and a live koji culture grown on rice. Distilled and bottled by Woodward Street Distilling Co. in Wellington, New Zealand.
Does Chi Chi Vodka taste like coconut?
Not in the way a flavoured vodka does. Coconut is used for fat and structure rather than for a coconut flavour note. What you get is weight and a creamy, confectioned character. Cereal milk more than pina colada.
What is the Ice Cream Effect?
It is our name for the texture. Protein broken into amino acids and fat carried through distillation give the spirit a velvety, melt-on-the-tongue weight that holds its structure in a cocktail instead of thinning out.
What is Hyper Mold?
Hyper Mold is our name for the three-phase process behind Chi Chi. Structural Extraction, where coconut fat is pulled into wheat spirit. Enzymatic Culturing, where koji converts starch and protein. Hybrid Distillation, where the still charge is cut with that culture rather than with water.
What does dunder have to do with vodka?
Dunder is a Caribbean rum tradition of charging the still with something living and acidic instead of something neutral. We borrowed the thinking rather than the ingredient. Our koji culture does the job that dunder does in rum, carrying complex precursors into the run.
Glamour is the easy part. The making is where we show off.
Mikey Ball, Head Distiller