Word: samogon
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...craft. Actors and musicians have revealed their recipes to magazines. Indeed, Russian liquor store shelves and supermarkets now stock a product that uses the appeal of bootleg as its selling point. "I talked to my friends about my idea for sometime and we came to the conclusion that making samogon, would be a great business model," says Nikolai Poluetkov the manager of Kosogorov Samogon, which calls itself the first moonshine to have a license. "We spent 2003 looking for recipes. We found one that worked made from grape and in 2004 we launched our product." Kosogorov, which is bottled...
...Samogon, which literally means self distilled, had its heyday in the mid 1980s when Mikhail Gorbachev enforced his alcohol reforms which, among other things, restricted sales to certain stories and prohibited restaurants from serving drinks before 2 p.m. It was a mini-Prohibition and, to get their lips on hooch, people were making alcohol with anything they had. One popular recipe suggested putting yeast, sugar and milk into a washing machine, switching it on a two hour cycle and then distilling the result. In rural Russia, peasants drank heart medication because they believed it contained alcohol...
...artisanal samogon that are all the rage today (one magazine had recipes for samogon including everything from sultanas to rice to dill) emerged from that period. And while it has become fashionable to make samogon, it is still illegal to sell homebrew - though many people do it for a little bit of extra income...
Good quality samogon, however, is unlikely to do anything for Russia's epidemic of alcoholism. Says Poluetkov, "If people want to drink window cleaner and aftershave, and sniff glue, nothing will stop them. Because window cleaner, aftershave and glue will always be on sale. An addiction is a psychological problem, not just a financial...
...bottle of vodka is expensive, and they will drink something else, what I don't know." According to Drobiz 45% of the vodka on sale is contraband and retails below 50 rubles ($1.50) for half a liter. "I hope that for their sake villages will resort to making samogon, because at least people will know what they are drinking...