Our Brighton Beach dinner plans tonight — pelmeni, kolbasy and maybe a manti or two — reminded us of a piece in our current alcohol issue about the Long Island business turning the area’s long-planted potato fields into vodka. The Long Island Spirits distillery in Riverhead looks out over 100 acres of potatoes, which they’re turning into blue-capped bottles named LiV (rhymes with “hive”) now poured at city restaurants, bars and liquor shops Capital Grill, Oceana, Del Frisco’s and Le Cirque. They also make fruit-flavored liqueurs and better still, with help from a local Long Island chardonnay, the area’s first brandy is in the works. Do dna!
