Polish Vodka Museum

This guide to the Polish Vodka Museum in Warsaw opens with a film of the building's former workers recalling the smell of fermenting rye that once filled these rooms, then traces the site's rise as the Warsaw Vodka Factory Koneser, an eighteen-nineties giant that shipped a quarter million bottles a day and perfected two of Poland's best-known vodkas. It follows the hall through German occupation, decades under state control, and the 2007 closure that silenced the stills. Listen for the artesian well sunk deep beneath the building, drawing from an ancient aquifer.