Wall Street Journal-bestselling author Fred Minnick wrote Whiskey Women: The Untold Story of How Women Saved Bourbon, Scotch & Irish Whiskey—the first book about female contributions to whiskey. He’s sharing his deep knowledge of spirits every week on Parade.com.

When you buy a bottle of vodka, you’re paying for the packaging, the marketing, and the hip celebrity endorsing it. You’re certainly not paying for flavor. The U.S. government defines vodka “to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color,” according to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau (TTB).

That’s right, those silly vodka commercials with six guys sipping vodka on the rocks—yeah right, who’s really doing that?—they’re telling you to drink something odorless and tasteless.

In all fairness, vodkas can pack some flavor. Karlsson, Tito’s, and Purity are three vodkas that actually taste like something other than “smooth.”

But let’s face it: I’m never going to be a vodka man. My title at the Kentucky Derby Museum is the Bourbon Authority, after all, and I wrote the first book on the history of women in whiskey.