Stolichnaya is a historic brand of vodka that was the Soviet Union’s primary spirits export from the 1950s until the Union’s collapse in 1991. Stolichnaya (the name can be translated as “Capital City”) would remain the world’s largest-selling vodka brand for several years after that. For a celebrated and fairly recent brand, its history is exceptionally murky, in part due to claims advanced by the interested parties in a longstanding dispute over the brand’s current ownership.
The one thing everybody seems to agree on is that the brand was created by the noted Soviet engineer Viktor Grigorevich Svirida (1907–ca. 1995). Beyond that, the brand’s creation has been placed as early as 1938 and as late as 1953, with various dates in between also cited, including four of the five years that the Soviet Union was locked in its desperate struggle with Nazi Germany. No documentation has been brought forward for any of these dates, and it is highly unlikely that, for instance, the Soviet Union created its first brand of luxury vodka in Leningrad while it was under siege, as one story has it. We do know that the brand was in circulation by 1950, because it appears in the price current for spirits the Trade Ministry of the Soviet Union published that year, where (adjusted for proof) it is the most expensive vodka of the five kinds listed. In the absence of other documentation, it is safest to assign the brand’s origin to the immediate postwar years, when the Soviet Union was modernizing its vodka industry; and indeed the brand’s now-iconic label, with its drawing of the 1930s Russian Constructivist-style Hotel Moskva, in its original state bore the logo of a Soviet entity that was renamed in 1946.
The use of a pictorial label was unique for a Soviet vodka at the time, and indeed Stolichnaya made use of several other innovations not previously used in Soviet vodka making, including quartz-sand filtration (along with the traditional charcoal filtration) and sweetening (a restrained 2 grams of beet-sugar were added per liter, just enough to smooth the spirit’s edge and add a little body to it). It was made from wheat with a little rye and used “live”—i.e., not distilled—water. In the late 1950s, the Soviet government began to test export markets for Stolichnaya, including the United Kingdom (successfully) and the United States (less so).
After trying again in the mid-1960s, the Soviets finally cracked the American market in 1972, with a massive trade deal that had PepsiCo acquire the importing rights to Stolichnaya in an unusual deal that had them trading vodka for cola and then selling the vodka (including the pepper-flavored Pertsovka, launched at Khrushchev’s insistence in 1962, and the herb- and honey-flavored Okhotnichaya). The rest of the 1970s were a period of spectacular growth for the brand, with sales jumping from next to nothing to 600,000 cases a year. “Stoli,” as it was known, was the leading imported vodka in sales and was also perceived as the best vodka on the market period. No drink in the 1970s was more fashionable.
Then the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The next few years were tough ones for the brand in the US market; years of bottle smashings, consumer boycotts, state boycotts. The Soviet destruction of a Korean airliner in 1983 did nothing to help matters. While Stolichnaya was struggling, another import, Absolut, began eating up its market share, guided by marketing genius Michel Roux. The rest of the 1980s saw the two brands battling it out, with Stoli by far the underdog. New, lighter flavors were introduced, which helped, as did the launch of the super-premium Stolichnaya Cristall in 1989 and a marketing campaign from Roux, who had left Absolut. See Absolut and Roux, Michel.
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 threw the brand’s legal status in chaos. Although it was the largest vodka brand in the world, nobody knew who actually owned it. After more than a decade of wrangling, during which the US rights passed from PepsiCo to Grand Metropolitan (soon to become Diageo) and then to Allied Domecq, the brand—or at least the export brand—ended up being owned by Yuri Shefler’s offshore-based SPI Corp. Domestically, the brand was renationalized by the Russian Federation. SPI and Soyuzplodoimport, the domestic owner, have been fighting over it ever since. At present, the export version is made at Kaliningrad’s SPI-RVVK distillery from rectified Russian bulk alcohol.
vodka.Howarth, Peter, et al., eds. The Spirit of Russian Vodka. London: Stolichnaya Brand Organization, [2008].
Katalog likerno-vodochnikh izdelii [Catalog of alcoholic beverages]. Moscow: Prodofromlenie, 1957.
“Preiskurant no. 119.” Moscow: Ministerstvo Togrovli Soyuza SSR, 1950.
Trommelen, Edward. Davai: The Russians and Their Vodka. Translated by David Stephenson. Montpelier, VT: Russian Life, 2012.
By: David Wondrich
Stolichnaya vodka, from a 1957 Soviet liquor catalog aimed at the domestic market.
Wondrich Collection.
Stolichnaya vodka, from a 1957 Soviet liquor catalog aimed at the domestic market. Source: Wondrich Collection.