Absolut honors Tel Aviv with vodka bottle

JERUSALEM — Tel Aviv, Israel's economic and cultural capital, prides itself on being a Mediterranean hotspot, a city that never sleeps, a Levantine tourist magnet.

Now, it's received a prized Nordic imprimatur to that effect: a limited, special edition bottle of Absolut Vodka dedicated to its urban vistas.

The Swedish company has decided to release a limited run of 150,000 bottles dedicated to Tel Aviv as part of its popular Absolut Blank art house series, which commissions artists to depict their native cities.

Absolut's ornate black and white design for Tel Aviv is supposed to evoke the city's Nordau, Rothschild and Chen boulevards, Ynet.com reports.

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"I designed a sort of a two-sided setting with a window offering a peek into a Tel Aviv boulevard at night. In general, this city has so much energy that you get your inspiration by just feeling what you're surrounded by," artist Nir Peled told Ynet about his design. 

Ynet added that Peled designed the bottle in collaboration with the Tempo beverage company's alcohol division, as well as with the Allenby Concept House.

Tempo is one of Israel's largest beverage distributors, and is licensed to distribute Absolut in the country by Pernod Ricard, who own it.

Collectible Absolut bottles are something of a hobby for many vodka fans, and collectors have created websites that catalog the rather shockingly huge number of forms the humble booze receptacles take.

Tel Aviv follows in the footsteps of Vancouver (2009) and Istanbul (2012), whose bottles have become collectors' items.

That may be thanks to the million-strong Russian immigrant wave of the 1990s, which has made free shots of vodka as common as getting the bill in the city's watering holes.