U’Luvka reconjures the spirit of a legendary vodka created by a famous alchemist at the court of King Sigismund III of Poland in the late 16th century.

“Wodka” essentially means water in Polish and back in the 16th Century it was probably safer than actually drinking the local water.

Distillation methods were still somewhat crude by today’s standards so in a bid to prevent affairs of state from grinding to a halt, the King and Queen commissioned their court alchemist Sendivogius to create a spirit of such exceptional balance and purity that it would be demanded by name.

He applied his alchemical skill and knowledge and created a royal elixir of rare quality and purity.

Today U’Luvka is Polish vodka re-imagined – the tradition has been embraced and restyled by our very modern day female alchemist Elizbieta Gołdyka.

Alchemy is all about achieving transformation through an appreciation of essential principles.

This is the essence of U’Luvka.

The result is yours to enjoy.

The Toast

Toasting is said to derive from the old custom of dropping a piece of spiced toast into one’s drink to give it more flavour. We would never dream of sullying the flavour of U’Luvka in such a way, but we do honour the old custom of raising a glass to propose a toast to something worthwhile. The universal tradition of toasting people’s health recalls the early days of spirit drinking as a way of warding off the plague. Since that danger appears to be past, we prefer to propose a toast of almost equally ancient and universal tradition, which encapsulates our three abiding principles:

“To friendship, love and pleasure”

U’Luvka’s iconic glass bottle was inspired by ancient alchemical distillation vessels. Alchemy is all about transformation, and every transformation involves the balance between opposites: light and dark, negative and positive and, that most potent of all transformative oppositions, the dance of man and woman, which is ultimately the dance of life itself.

The U’Luvka bottle is a physical representation of the balance between male and female, with the rounded base representing ‘female’ and the elegant neck ‘male’. The beautiful simplicity of the bottle is kept free of ornamentation because it needs none: when something is in harmony, it is inherently beautiful…‘Form follows Function’.

And when something is simple and beautiful, it’s usually practical too: we’re told that bartenders love U’Luvka’s design because the kink in the waist makes a perfect thumb rest for smooth pouring.