Crystal Head

Crystal Head was conceived by actor Dan Aykroyd - yes, the star of Ghostbusters - in 2007 alongside artist and good friend John Alexander. Aykroyd already had an investment in Patron Tequila and wanted to use his experience with drinks brands to produce a vodka that didn’t have any additives at all – glycerol, citrus oils and sugars are often used to sweeten mainstream vodkas slightly to make them more palatable to a wider audience.

Aykroyd and Alexander were fascinated with the legends of 13 Crystal Skulls that are said to originate from Mayan/MesoAmerican cultures. However evidence increasingly points to them actually being made in Germany around the 1850s.

The vodka launched in 2008 – the same year Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull was released. Aykroyd met Steven Spielberg during filming as he was concerned there would be a conflict of interest, but Spielberg loved the bottles and they were served at the film’s premiere.

The vodka is produced in Newfoundland by Globefill Inc, who use ‘Peaches and Cream’ corn, which has two colour kernels and a sweeter than normal flavour. It is filtered 7 times, the last 3 times through ‘Herkimer diamonds’ (which are not diamonds but crystal quartz), before diluting with glacial Newfoundland water. It’s bottled in Toronto, Ontario – ironically the Liquor Control Board of Ontario banned the sale of Crystal Head in stores from 2010 to 2012 due to concerns over people being offended with its connotations of death.

In 2014 Scottish forensic artist Nigel Cockerton performed a facial reconstruction of the bottle, resulting in a smiling man. Aykroyd always thought the bottle was the skull of a woman he named Joy, but was relived to find out it didn’t look like him.

Onyx was launched in 2020 and uses Blue Weber Agave from a single farm in Mexico - Blue Weber Agave is the specific plant used to make Tequila, and the end result here is a vodka with a subtle earthy, spicy note. It's an intriguing flavour profile that isn't overbearing and full-on but instead subtle and interesting. It's a very interesting vodka to use in the likes of an Espresso Martini, where the earthy tones complement coffee brilliantly. And of course the black skull looks stunning!