Smirnoff is, as of 2021, the world’s bestselling vodka brand, with more than forty different bottlings and flavors available. The modern Smirnoff brand was founded in the United States at the end of Prohibition, but it traces its heritage to Pyotr Arsenievich Smirnov, who opened one of the first vodka distilleries to use a continuous column still in Russia in 1867. Pyotr’s son, Vladimir, fled Russia following the country’s revolution in 1917 and settled in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and later France, where he changed the spelling of his last name to the more phonetic Smirnoff.
Vladimir Smirnoff made small amounts of vodka himself, but he sold the rights to his name and the insignia of the family’s old vodka brand to Rudolph Kunett, a Russian expatriate living in the United States, in 1933. Kunett set up a small distilling operation that was purchased in 1938 by John G. Martin, an executive for Heublein, Inc.
American drinkers were not very familiar with vodka at the time, and Martin sold Smirnoff emphasizing its neutral smell and taste, labeling it “white whiskey.” In the early 1940s, Martin teamed up with Jack Morgan, the owner of a Los Angeles pub called the Cock ’n’ Bull, which had its own house brand of ginger beer. The pair combined the vodka and ginger beer to create the Moscow Mule cocktail. Martin had engraved copper Moscow Mule mugs made and gave them away to bartenders around the country throughout the 1940s, leading to a massive and sustained burst in the popularity of both Smirnoff in particular and vodka in general. By 1978, Smirnoff was the bestselling distilled spirit in the United States.
Smirnoff’s owner Heublein was purchased by R. J. Reynolds in 1982, and then the brand was sold to Grand Metropolitan in 1987, which merged with Guinness to form the liquor giant Diageo in 1997.
See also vodka; Moscow Mule; and Morgan, Jack.
Himelstein, Linda. The King of Vodka: the Story of Piotr Smirnov. New York: Harper Collins, 2009.
Ryan, Bill. “Smirnoff White Whiskey-No Smell, No Taste.” New York Times, February 19, 1995.
By: Jason Horn