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Here is an interview with John Martin, then-owner of Smirnoff, and one of the 
men responsible for the Moscow Mule.

Van Wert Times Bulletin 22nd November 1955.

On the Line, By Bob Considine.

John G. Martin, "rebel of the rum business," tells me that the Russian 
revolution has succeeded in this country. Vodka has become popular even among 
members of the Union League Club who still vote for Alf M. Landon.

Many people in the booze business, one of America's leading industries, feel 
this is pretty terrible.

Mr. Martini, a big man's man type who fought in North Africa, thinks it's okay.

He should, Martin makes about half the vodka consumed in the U.S. today. He is 
president of a Hartford, Conn., concern named Heublein.

"I had a public pulse company sound out 14,000 hard drinkers in New York and 
they came up with the fact that only 7,000 of them like the taste of whisky," 
he said, while enjoying a drink of that which caused a shudder among the other 
fifty per cent.

"Maybe that's the secret behind vodka, not just our vodka but the vodka made 
by every other firm in the country--and there are 60 or 70 now turning it out. 
It has little or no taste."

As a non-vodka man, I asked him what was the turning point in this stuff's 
life. Ten years ago in this country the vodka business represented only 
$50,000 of a $2,000,000,000 a year industry. Today it is up to $50,000,000 of 
it.

"It's a long story," he said. "Around the turn of the century it's said that 
the richest family in the world was the Smirnoff clan in Russia. They had a 
lock on the world business in vodka.

"But the November revolution came along and everything went to pot. Vladimir 
Smirnoff got out to Paris, broke, met an old girl friend who loaned him 
$100,000, and he started up a Paris edition of the old distillery.

"He went broke all over again. Or, at least, the girl friend did. Then it was 
brought here, which gave some work to White Russian royalty as salesmen.

"They couldn't sell it. Nobody could sell it. We bought it for one dollar. I 
mean the rights to make it. A bottle cost more than what we bought the rights 
for.

"Well, we had them make up 2,000 cases for us. That was half the annual 
output. They didn't have enough corks to plug up the bottles so they used some 
old corks they had stamped 'whisky'.

"We coaxed a South Carolina dealer into taking five cases though he didn't 
know what it was. He had to unload it so he examined the bottle, the cork and 
the contents and put up a sign on his store which read: "Smirnoff White Whisky 
-- No taste, No Smell."

"We didn't know anything about this. All we knew what that [sic] a few days 
after we sent him the five cases he ordered fifty, and a few days after that 
he ordered 500. You have to look in on things like that, and we did.

"We found out that people in South Carolina were'nt drinking vodka as it had 
been drunk for generations...you know, the toast, or the thing to be sipped in 
a tiny glass. They were mixing it with Coke and milk and Dr. Pepper and lord 
knows what.

"It didn't change the color of what they were drinking and they couldn't taste 
it."

Vodka disappeared in the country from 1942 to 1946, but apparently only South 
Carolina missed it. When Martin came home from the war he and a fellow he met 
during the war, Jack Morgan, who runs the Cock 'N Bull pub in Hollywood, 
dreamed up something called the "Moscow Mule."

Martin supplied the copper mugs. It was vodka and ginger beer. People began to 
talk about the drink and to experiment. When somebody mixed it with orange 
juice it became the "Screw Driver." When somebody dumped it in tomato juice it 
became the "Bloody Mary."

Whither vodka? I asked . Martini answered: "I'll live to see it outsell 
everything else in the industry. You don't have to age it or store it. Just 
strain neutral spirits through charcoal made of eight different types of wood 
and there it is."

Okay. There it is.

<<end article>>


Does anyone know of any other versions of the Moscow Mule story? 

Other Moscow Mule Information:

http://wiki.webtender.com/wiki/Moscow_Mule


Cheers!

George S.


g.sinclair[at]yahoo.co.uk

http://www.wiki.webtender.com/wiki/


"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

-- Albert Einstein