Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of the Russian Federation, there was a vodka free-for-all when Yeltsin abolished the state vodka monopoly. There was no tax on vodka and it was so cheap that it was often used as a cleaner. Russia was flooded with imported vodka, which for a time sold more than domestic brands. Legal battles commenced, with private enterprise trying to register names that had been controlled by the Soviet Union until the Federation managed to stake its claim as the rightful inheritor.
The demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989 seemed to open up the Russian market to Smirnoff. The Soviet army remained in East Germany for three years but was paid for by West Germany. Previously unavailable western products such as Malborough cigarettes and jeans were bought by the army, which also consumed two hundred bottles of Smirnoff vodka a day. It is easy to forget that the world’s most famous vodka was unknown in Russia and the former East Germany, and to meet the demand, twenty thousand bottles a day were flown to Germany from Britain.
It seemed a suitable time to bring Smirnoff into Russia, and a bottle was created with Russian labels and advertising that emphasised the origins of the company. The success in Germany was not repeated in Russia, as the novelty of drinking imported vodka in Russia did not last, and Russians continued to buy familiar, domestic brands.
The arrival of Smirnoff in Russia did not please Boris Smirnov, a former KGB officer and descendant of Pyotr Arsenijevic Smirnov, who had begun to produce vodka from the original recipe that had been preserved in the family. Starting up in the south of Russia with the help of his uncle, Boris eventually leased the original Moscow Smirnov headquarters which had become a garage, furnishing it with 19th-century antiques and decorating the walls with old Smirnov advertisements.
Boris learned of a dispute in 1980 when a Russian-East German spirit exporter sued Smirnoff for trying to import the famous brand. The Russian-German company argued that the Smirnoff label – brandishing the tsarist warrants and the Imperial Eagle, and partly lettered in Cyrillic – misled customers about where it was made. The court was told that the Smirnoff company never had the legal rights to the Smirnoff package of copyrights, recipes and trademarks sold to them by Vladimir Smirnoff in 1933 because he had already disposed of his interests in the Russian Smirnov company in 1905 to his brother Pyotr. The case was settled in an amicable manner, with Smirnoff agreeing to remove the distinctive Russian features from the label and to state clearly that the vodka was not made in Russia.
The result encouraged Boris Smirnov to think that money might be made out of Smirnoff’s owners, Diageo, and he sued them using the same arguments that had been raised by the exporter in 1980. The truth of the exact origins of the Russian Smirnov company had been distorted into a myth, he claimed, adding that some of the publicity used by Smirnoff was an invention. Diageo explained that they had bought the company in good faith, and quite apart from the fact that it was almost impossible to prove whether Vladimir had been entitled to sell the company, subsequent owners had prevented Smirnoff from becoming extinct. The Russian Smirnovs felt that Boris was dragging the family name into the mud, and his uncle dissolved their partnership by selling his stake in the company.
On 9 November 2000, armed riot police wearing black masks stormed the Smirnov Moscow building, smashing windows and breaking down doors. Boris was inside resisting eviction, helped by workers who threw bottles of vodka at the police. Despite his wife suffering a head injury, Boris only gave up after a lengthy struggle.
The reuse for its original purpose of “the house by the Cast Iron Bridge”, once the pride of Pyotr Arsenijevic Smirnov, was short-lived, but the wily old founder would have admired Boris for his tenacity whilst at the same time deploring his mistaken judgement.
Perhaps rather surprisingly, the most popular way of enjoying vodka in the West has now begun to influence the drinkers in the countries who first produced it. With the greater ability to travel abroad since the collapse of Communism, young drinkers in Poland have been influenced by western fashions and are drinking flavoured vodka in increasing numbers, with lemon proving to be the most popular variant. If they were considered slow to adopt western drinking habits, this is partly because outdoor and internet alcohol advertising is not allowed in Poland.
Drinking trends in Russia have changed in recent years and vary across the country. Outside the two main cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, the straight vodka shot is still preferred above all other alcoholic drinks. The fashion-conscious in Moscow prefer to drink whisky, rum and tequila instead of neat vodka, as they consider themselves more international by doing so. If they drink vodka at all, it is in a cocktail because it is considered “the international way of drinking vodka”. According to one trade magazine, the cocktail culture is expanding rapidly in St. Petersburg, “which follows trends established in Moscow, such as the popularity of the fruit cocktails, while Moscow follows what’s happening in the UK.”
It is however unlikely that either Russia or Poland will follow the UK’s most recent trend of vodka production in the form of speciality distilling on a small scale, sometimes described as “organic distilling”. New arrivals in the UK vodka market have concentrated on small but quality-controlled production for a speciality market, which deliberately makes no effort to compete with more famous brands. The advertising language used by the small producer is unashamedly chosen to appeal to the type of middle-class consumers who are more likely to buy produce from farmers’ markets.
Two such London vodka companies have gained particularly high praise: Sipsmith of Hammersmith and Sacred Vodka in Highgate. Both firms have employed different methods of distillation. The first handmade copper-pot still to be made in London for 189 years produces small batches of vodka from barley grain for Sipsmith in an extremely labour-intensive process. The language Sipsmith uses – “crafting truly artisanal spirits of uncompromising quality” – is chosen to reinforce the suggestion that their products are given the same care and individual treatment you would expect from makers of custom-made furniture rather than a mass-produced factory object.
Its founder, Fairfax Hall, claims that vodka drinkers are “tired of the message dripping off vodka packaging that one brand is more expensive than another or confers more status”, and believes that in the future “people will move away from consuming vodka for status or as a mixer and will begin to focus on its taste. This will lead to higher-quality, taste-oriented cocktails based on craft vodka, for the more discerning drinker.”
Alex Kammerling, who used to work for Grey Goose, has commented that when selling vodka:
The story and quality are obviously key these days. People want artisanal. Look at something like Sipsmith with a beautiful little still in a residential area of West London that produces a great spirit. It has a great story, but what’s interesting is looking at how these and other distillers deal with demand. If they exceed capacity and have to distil somewhere else, do you lose a bit of the romanticism?
By contrast, the Highgate Distillery uses a completely different method of distillation with the aid of its Sacred Microdistillery equipment, which also produces a gin. Both of the firm’s vodka and gin products use English grain spirit, but the inclusion of “botanicals”, a flavouring process more generally reserved for gin, is also used for their vodka.
That the small producer can succeed in terms of international recognition when judged alongside mass-market names was proved by William Chase when his Chase Vodka won the 2010 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Chase, who started distilling the vodka in 2008, had previously made Tyrells crisps, and his Hereford farm potatoes were the natural choice for the vodka’s basic raw ingredient. Thirty-five pounds of potatoes are needed to produce just one bottle, but the result is a creamy vodka often preferred by those who would rather sip the spirit than drink it in one shot.
At one time out of fashion in the UK, the vodka cocktail has been restored to favour in the last few years, largely through specialist vodka bars which also devise evenings of entertainment. Vodka’s qualities, its effectiveness as a good mixer and the fact that it was drunk in large quantities by young drinkers, inspired the three owners of Inventive Leisure to create a bar dedicated to vodka, which would offer a large choice of the spirit. They took Irish pubs as their model for their Revolution bar chain. Those pubs, with their old-fashioned decor, traditional seating, good food and Irish stout, appeared to succeed in attracting like-minded drinkers who sought the same features. Despite being themed, Irish bars were genuine rather than gimmicky places to socialise in.
Revolution bars aimed to provide a similar ambiance for vodka drinkers and consequently included interior furnishings of red velvet curtains and artwork suggestive of both Imperial and Soviet Russia. The atmosphere was comfortable and friendly, and the first Revolution bar, which opened in Manchester in 1996, was aimed at the student drinker and offered a completely new vodka experience.
Revolution’s trademark speciality, the flavoured shot, was an immediate success. Over thirty varieties with a base of Absolut vodka were bottled in a vodka factory in Dukinfield near Manchester. An early “mint chocolate shot” did not see vodka being soaked in polo mints, as some bars had provided, but instead used Aero mint chocolate. Served ice cold, new variants such as Bakewell Tart and Turkish Delight drew on favourites of the cake or sweet shop, but the flavours changed with the seasons and even included Mince Pie and Cream.
From the outset, Revolution sold over fifty premium brands of vodka, with Stolichnaya later being replaced by Eristoff as the house brand. Most of the vodkas were unfamiliar not only to the potential customers but also to some of the bar staff who could not pronounce all of the names. It was then that Revolution employed vodka experts to train their staff and to encourage customers to take part in tasting sessions so that they knew their Ketel One Citroen from their Grey Goose Le Citron.
As Revolution grew, its target market expanded beyond the student drinker, and at the time of writing there are sixty-one Revolution vodka bars from Aberdeen to Plymouth, which also sell food, wine and beer.
There is one Revolution bar in the UK, located in Manchester, which is student-only, but it is not the original flagship bar. Even there, the velvet curtains and the Russian-inspired art fittings have gone, as the Revolution style has now adapted to suit the areas where the bars are situated and the consumers who drink in them. Although not a vodka club, Revolution comes closest to those found in Russia and Poland. Free privilege cards qualify their holders for special concessions, free drinks and other packages that are centred around the concept of sharing vodka with friends. Only in Edinburgh is there a nightclub dedicated to vodka. Red Vodka Club is situated in the heart of the city’s clubland and serves over sixty premium vodkas as well as beer and other drinks.
Given the size of the country, it is risky to state that the most remarkable venue for drinking vodka in the US is to be found in the form of Red Square Bar in the Mandalay Bay Hotel, Las Vegas. Nevertheless, the bar has created a setting that aims to recreate the experience of drinking vodka in Imperial and Soviet Russia but in the comfort of a luxury American hotel. It claims to sell the greatest number of vodkas in America.
Emulating the post-Soviet destruction of images of Lenin, guests on the way to the bar are greeted by a headless 14 foot statue of the Soviet leader. The head of the statue used to hang from the ceiling in the bar until it mysteriously vanished in 1999. It was returned when a reward of $5,000 was offered, and it was then frozen in a solid block of ice, forming the centrepiece of the special vodka vault where the temperature is -5 degrees Fahrenheit. To endure the Siberian winter climate, visitors are lent either full-length Russian furs or military coats along with fur hats before choosing vodka from over two hundred varieties, which are served on a frozen ice bar.
In the main bar, the interior is decorated with a mixture of opulent red hangings from the Imperial years, a chandelier from a defunct Russian embassy and Soviet propaganda posters on brick walls. Vodka drinkers are encouraged to drink the shots straight in the Russian tradition and can seek assistance from a “Vodka Goddess” to enjoy the best experience the bar can provide. The restaurant also serves Russian food, wisely opting to be “perestroika inspired” than to take its culinary cues from Soviet-era fare.