Business Books: Chronicling Smirnoff, from serf to empire

By Amie Ferris-Rotman

MOSCOW (Reuters) - From the court of the tsar, through the Russian revolution and into James Bond's ice cold Martini, Smirnoff vodka has had a tumultuous history.

"The King of Vodka" (HarperBusiness, $29.99), by U.S. journalist Linda Himelstein, is the tale of its creator, serf turned dogged merchant Pyotr Smirnov.

"He was written about by Chekhov, a foe of Tolstoy's, and a purveyor to the tsar. The story was just too compelling to resist," Himelstein said of her subject.

Smirnov first came to Himelstein's attention in 1996, when a representative of his family came to see her in New York, unrolled the family tree and said they were fighting to win back the brand, which they had lost after the Russian revolution.

As upper-class merchants, Smirnov's descendents were reduced to poverty in Soviet times. After many attempts to re-establish the business from Turkey to Bulgaria, his grandson moved to France and sold the name to a U.S. entrepreneur in 1933, who took the brand global.

Until the 1970s, his relatives behind the Iron Curtain had no clue their great grandfather's drink had become the world's best-selling spirit.

By then, it was the tipple of choice of the West's most famous fictional Cold War spy, James Bond, who is seen drinking Smirnoff vodka in 21 of the 22 films that bear his name, according to Himelstein's calculations.

Lawsuits over the brand's ownership persisted until 2006, when Russian consortium Alfa Bank signed a joint venture deal with British drinks company Diageo.