Russian Standard , a winter-wheat-based vodka made in St. Petersburg, Russia, was introduced in 1998 by Roust, Inc., the luxury-goods and banking conglomerate controlled by billionaire Roustam Tariko (1962–). The first Russian vodka brand to be developed with the aid of Western marketing expertise (including that of McKinsey, the American consulting giant), Russian Standard rapidly developed a dominant share in the domestic vodka market. In 2009, it represented over 60 percent of the Russian market, although that figure has fallen more recently. Although it is Russia’s leading export brand, in 2017 it was only in sixteenth place among vodka brands globally.
Russian Standard was originally made at St. Petersburg’s large Liviz distillery, the oldest operating one in Russia (it was founded in 1897), but the brand moved its production to its own new, state-of-the-art distillery in 2006. It is made in several grades, using multiple column distillations whose number increases with the grade, as does the exoticism of the material through which the vodka is filtered. See charcoal filtration. The entry-grade Russian Standard is distilled four times and filtered four times through birch charcoal.
The company’s other bottlings include Russian Standard Gold, reportedly inspired by “an ancient Siberian vodka recipe made popular by Peter the Great,” which features extracts of Siberian Golden Root (ginseng) for a richer taste; Russian Standard Platinum, which is filtered through silver; and Imperia, marketed as a luxury vodka and filtered through quartz crystal from the Ural Mountains. All of the brand expressions use water from Lake Ladoga, and all are bottled at 40 percent.
vodka.Panibratov, Andrei. Russian Multinationals. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Pasternak, Lois. “Russian Standard Vodka Turns 20.” Travel Markets Insider, July 20, 2018. http://travelmarketsinsider.net/russian-standard-vodka-turns-20/ (accessed March 10, 2021).
By: Kara Newman