Gluten-free vodka - someone got some 'splainin' to do

Vodka is a pretty simple distilled spirit, ethanol and water, two colorless, tasteless, totally miscible liquids.  It is true that fermented grains produce some aromatics that can be transferred during distillation, but then vodka is supposedly charcoal filtered to remove them.  But how is there gluten in any distilled beverage?  First, gluten is a protein found in the endosperm of grains; it's what makes bread dough sticky.  But proteins don't distill; they denature when heated.  Yes, a fermented beverage made from cereals may have some gluten, but to make a spirit you distill the "beer" to make a "whisky" and only heat-volatile substances end up in the finished product.  Using the idea that a vodka lacks gluten as a sales pitch is something TPP doesn't understand.  Who thinks there's gluten in distilled beverages in the first place?  This just puzzles me.  Is there something TPP is missing here?  You might as well market the vodka as cholesterol-free too, the vodka that's the favorite of really stupid and gullible people.  Besides, if they used potatoes as the starting carbohydrate, you wouldn't have gluten around to matter anyways.    

What should bourbon taste like?

An advertisement caught my attention for cherry, spices, and honey tea flavored bourbon.  Having struggled to control my gag reflex, here's my take on this.  In some sense the Phactor understands flavored vodkas.  Ethanol is a colorless, flavorless, clear liquid that mixes totally in any proportion with water, another colorless, flavorless, clear liquid, so adding some sort of flavor to vodka makes a little bit of sense.  On the other hand bourbon tastes like bourbon, and some taste better than others, and some are better values than others.  Now if you do not like bourbon, fine, but apparently the whole point of flavoring bourbon is to get people who don't like bourbon to drink bourbon, and the assumption must be made that if the bourbon was any good to begin with, people would drink it for the bourbon flavor, not some other flavor.  And when it comes to flavored spirits, the Phactor doubts that these flavors are subtle. 
Great minds must think somewhat alike because over at the Garden Rant, someone is also in a tizzy about cocktails and what has happened to them when they become too, too fashionable.  We are on the same page; they call it an old fashioned cocktail that because it is, so don't mess around with some infusion of orange blossoms and cucumber slices. 
So this makes two problems to deal with.  First you have spirit makers trying to cater to a generation that grew up on sweet, fruity drinks, and then you have overly fashionable cocktails.  How the Phactor hates ordering a margarita and then being asked if it is to be frozen, sugar or salt rimmed, or on the rocks.  A margarita is served on the rocks with a salted rim.  Anything else is another drink which is why they call frozen margaritas frozen margaritas.  It's a different drink.  But some purveyors do get it.  One of the best small, locovore, farm to table, creative restaurants in our area always features a couple of classic, we-didn't-mess-with-it cocktails.