Just what the doctor ordered

It's the answer to every drinker's prayers: hangover-free alcohol. And, with the help of medical experts, this man claims he's cracked it.

It all started with a headache. A throbbing pain, pounding away at the back of his head. All he'd had was a few vodka Martinis but the price he paid was high. "It may sound obvious," says Maurice Kanbar (above), engineer, entrepreneur, chemist and scientist, "but things are only ever invented because they're needed and I needed something that wouldn't give me a headache." The idea of producing a hangover-free alcohol has probably flitted through many a sore head, but when it entered Kanbar's, he went straight to his lab and set about making it.

It all started with a headache. A throbbing pain, pounding away at the back of his head. All he'd had was a few vodka Martinis but the price he paid was high. "It may sound obvious," says Maurice Kanbar (above), engineer, entrepreneur, chemist and scientist, "but things are only ever invented because they're needed and I needed something that wouldn't give me a headache." The idea of producing a hangover-free alcohol has probably flitted through many a sore head, but when it entered Kanbar's, he went straight to his lab and set about making it.

With the help of a physician friend, and access to a vast medical library, he discovered that headaches were caused by a sensitivity to "congeners", or the natural impurities formed in alcohol during the fermentation process. Kanbar quickly became an "amateur expert". He locked himself away in his lab in San Francisco and tweaked recipes, altered temperatures and distilled alcohol over and over again. A year later he emerged triumphant, with a formula for what he claims is the smoothest, cleanest, purest vodka imaginable. }

But his work didn't end there. The local distilleries thought his vodka, with its complicated quadruple distillation and triple filtration processes, was the work of a madman and initially no one was willing to go near it. He had to go as far afield as Germany to find a manufacturer which would produce the cobalt-blue bottles that Kanbar insisted his vodka be packaged in.

But his persistence paid off. The vodka, which he christened Skyy, was eventually unleashed on a grateful American public in 1992. To this day the recipe remains a secret known only to three trusted technicians.

Kanbar remains fairly blasé about his achievement, perhaps not surprisingly. He was born in Brooklyn, the son of a hard-working but eternally unsuccessful businessman. "My father used to run a small commercial laundry, he worked incredibly hard but only just managed to scrape a living. By the age of 12, I was telling him how to run his business." Kanbar studied engineering but shortly after graduating stumbled across an invention which was to ensure that he need never do a day's work in his life. His discovery was the "D-fuzz-it" - a device which removes fluff balls from wool sweaters. It went on to sell worldwide, netted Kanbar a fortune and set him on the road, at the age of 21, to a lucrative career as an inventor. Today, the stocky, fast-talking New Yorker dresses in expensive suits, describes himself as an eternal bachelor ("I'm still dating girls. The nearest I get to giving my age is to admit that I'm over 50") and goes everywhere accompanied by an entourage of drinks industry people.

Alongside Skyy, Kanbar has 32 patents to his name. There's the gadget he invented to hold incisions open during operations, the device that removes varicose veins and the one that removes cataracts from eyes. He is also credited with inventing the first ever multiplex cinema - "I've got a building in Greenwich Village and back in 1971 I didn't know what to do with it," he says, "so I stuck a projector here and a projector there and ended up with a four-screen cinema. It's still there to this day."

But currently he's most pleased with himself about Skyy, which has just been introduced to a select few style bars in the UK. He goes nowhere without his travel chemistry set - a couple of vials of congeners - which he insists on pouring back into the vodka to demonstrate the difference. We do a "Pepsi challenge" with another leading brand, and it's true, Skyy is fresher and dangerously palatable.

In the US, Skyy has shifted so fast it's now the third biggest-selling super-premium vodka. "Over there it's not a bloody Mary or a vodka Martini any more but," he says, "a Skyy Mary and a Skyy Martini." Eight months ago it was introduced in Italy and already it's caught up with other leading brands. Kanbar even claims Skyy has forced his competitors to reconsider the purity of their own recipes.

But success aside, you do get the feeling that Kanbar is perhaps most pleased about his invention for himself and his own drinking habits. "If you drink a whole bottle you would get a hangover," he says, taking a large slug, "but for the sensitive drinker it is life-changing."

American spring punch

50ml Skyy vodka

25ml crÿme de cassis

17ml lemon juice

50ml cranberry juice

dash of sugar gomme syrup

Champagne

Shake all the ingredients, except for the Champagne, over ice and strain into a hi-ball glass. Top up with Champagne and garnish with a couple of raspberries and a slice of lemon.

O Skyy raspberry Martini

50ml Skyy vodka

25ml cranberry juice

20ml raspberry purée

5ml lime cordial

5ml framboise (raspberry liqueur)

Shake all of the ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker and strain into a frozen Martini glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon.

Skyyline

50ml Skyy vodka

10ml blue Curaçao

10ml lime cordial

5ml Archers

Shake over ice and strain into a frozen Martini glass. Garnish with a wedge of lime.

Skyy classic

A bottle of chilled vermouth

75ml Skyy vodka

Pour a small amount of vermouth into a frozen martini glass until the glass is coated and shake out the excess (Match bar staff use an atomiser, far left). Shake the vodka over ice and strain into the glass. Garnish with an olive on a cocktail stick.

Skyymo

50ml Skyy vodka

5ml blue Curaçao

5ml lime juice

5ml passion fruit juice

Shake all ingredients over ice and strain into a frozen martini glass. Garnish with a big, fat blackberry.

Skyy vodka cocktail recipes devised by Dick Bradsell of Sosho Match bar, 2 Tabernacle Street, London EC2 (020-7920 0701)