Overtaxed Russkies Drunk on Anti-Freeze Martinis

Nick Gillespie | June 21, 2005

Reader Brendan Themes sends along this news bit he rightly deems "simultaneously hilarious and repugnant" about how a tax hike on hooch in Russia had led to a massive increase in industrial-strength cocktails:

Production of drinks concocted from perfume, skincare products and anti-freeze increased by 38.2 percent in the first five months of 2005 compared with the same period in 2004, while vodka production fell 9.4 percent, according to data from Russia's National Alcohol Association....

Pavel Shapkin, director of the association, which represents the interests of drinks producers and consumers, blamed recent tax hikes on vodka for the increase in consumption of vodka substitutes.

A quarter of a litre of these "surrogate" drinks costs around 14 roubles (63c), while the same amount of vodka costs 70 roubles ($3.16), Shapkin said.

"The increase in alcohol surrogates is because of tax legislation on vodka," he told Izvestiya.

I'm not sure I buy Comrade Shapkin's argument completely, but it sounds plausible.

Whole account here.

Comments

|6.21.05 @ 11:51AM|#

Somebody needs to send a delegation to the Ozarks where they can learn the art of crafting homemade corn whiskey. Or heck, they can just go to this website here: coppermoonshinestills.com

fyodor|6.21.05 @ 12:02PM|#

Goddamnit, why won't people respond to prohibition and sin tax the way they're SUPPOSED to!?!!??!!?!

|6.21.05 @ 12:04PM|#

I don't think that liquor should be excessively taxed, but if you're drinking perfume and anti-freeze, you just might better served by looking into rehab rather than vodka tax cuts.

MP|6.21.05 @ 12:07PM|#

So if the drug warriors in America want to fight meth by making cold medicine only available via prescription, does that mean the drug warriors in Russia will want to do the same with anti-freeze?

|6.21.05 @ 12:17PM|#

I hope so, MP - I think it'd be easier to get prescriptions from your local mechanic than a doctor.

"I need a new distributor cap, a serpentine belt, and - oh yeah! some Oxycontin."

|6.21.05 @ 12:22PM|#

"I'll have a Prestone martini. Shaken, not stirred."

|6.21.05 @ 12:31PM|#

Stories about Russians going to any extent to drink anything remotely like ethanol were rampant during the run-up to the end of the USSR. Diversion of potatoes, fruit and sugar "on the left hand" for homemade batches of hooch and wine was normal, also. My favorite story was from a Russian Air Force defector who said that the Soviet air defense radars might not work when the balloon went up, because undenatured alcohols used in servicing them were so often stolen and replaced by water and other fluids that equipment was prone to unexpected failure.

Somebody should send the Russian Federation's alcohol control bureaucrats a copy of Arthur Laffer's cocktail napkin.

It is good to see that the production of beer is up. [19th Century mindset] As all right-thinking folks know, beer is the tipple of the essentially sober, hardworking citizen, while the daily inbibing of hard liquor is the mark of the drunkard and wastrel.[/19CMS]

Kevin

Kevin

|6.21.05 @ 12:34PM|#

kevrob,

"Work is the scourge of the drinking classes." --Oscar Wilde

|6.21.05 @ 12:34PM|#

E.Steven is right - they should try making their own moonshine...it works just fine, and it surprisingly doesn't taste that bad. I tried it once a few months ago, and I still have ~90% of my vision!

|6.21.05 @ 12:43PM|#

one book:

Moscow to the End of the Line

good stuff, my little strumpets.

|6.21.05 @ 12:55PM|#

Ahhh, nothing like a Drakkar on the rocks. I'm not sure how high the hooch taxes are in Russia, but it's still quite cheap by comparison.

I agree with smacky, I used to have access to some moonshine from the backwoods of Tennessee, and while the quality varied from batch to batch, it was always drinkable.

Slightly OT, but in Finland you legally cannot order a double - you must pay for (and receive) two separate drinks. Or so I was told at the airport.

|6.21.05 @ 12:58PM|#

"Production of drinks concocted from perfume, skincare products and anti-freeze increased by 38.2 percent in the first five months of 2005 compared with the same period in 2004"

So these "drinks" are actually PRODUCED? So you walk into a bar and it looks like a fucking perfume counter? Do the bartenders spray you as you walk by?

Jesus, those ivans are such booze-hounds..

|6.21.05 @ 1:06PM|#

To echo Kevrob I remember the (apocryphal?) stories in the late '80s of folks in the USSR shaving bald spots on their and applying shoe polish to get a buzz.

And the metric offered for the amount of hooch being produced from random ingredients so far in 2005 seems a bit over-precise for an activity occurring on the sly.

|6.21.05 @ 1:10PM|#

let me just state for the record that russians will never... never... made a good bottle of whiskey. it's bad enough that we've got the canadians trying.

|6.21.05 @ 1:14PM|#

make.

|6.21.05 @ 1:18PM|#

"Somebody needs to send a delegation to the Ozarks where they can learn the art of crafting homemade corn whiskey"
"they should try making their own moonshine"

You are so ignorant as not to know what *samogon* is?

|6.21.05 @ 1:20PM|#

For an added bit of outrage, I remember there was an incident a year or so ago when vandals attacked an art exhibit critical of the Russian Orthodox Church. One of the controversial art pieces was a model of a church made of vodka bottles. This was supposed to be a satiric response to the fact that the Orthodox Church has some kind of special agreement with the gov't to distribute vodka.

Ironic, considering that Russian anti-semites used to accuse Jews of conspiring to keep the Russian people drunk (by being active in liquor distribution).

|6.21.05 @ 1:23PM|#

really? and they thought that was a bad thing?

|6.21.05 @ 2:17PM|#

I tried it once a few months ago, and I still have ~90% of my vision!

I thought your lenses were so thick that they couldn't even fit into frames!

|6.21.05 @ 2:25PM|#

Jack o' Diamonds, Jack o' Diamonds and I know you of old
You've robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold
It's a whiskey, you villain, you've been my downfall
You've kicked me, you've cuffed me, but I love you for all

It's a whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whiskey I cry
If I don't get rye whiskey, well, I think I will die

I'll eat when I'm hungry, I'll drink when I'm dry
If the hard times don't kill me, I'll lay down and die
I'll tune up my fiddle and I 'll rosin my bow
I'll make myself welcome, wherever I go

Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whiskey I cry
If a tree don't fall on me, I'll live till I die

Beefsteak when I'm hungry red liquor when I'm dry
Greenbacks when I'm hard up and religion when I die
They say I drink whiskey, my money's my own
All them that don't like me, can leave me alone

Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whiskey I cry
If a tree don't fall on me, I'll live till I die

Sometimes I drink whiskey, sometimes I drink rum
Sometimes I drink brandy, at other times none
But if I get boozey, my whiskey's my own
And them that don't like me, can leave me alone

Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whiskey I cry
If a tree don't fall on me, I'll live till I die

If the ocean was whiskey and I was a duck
I'd dive to the bottom to get one sweet suck
But the ocean ain't whiskey and I ain't a duck
So we'll round up the cattle and then we'll get drunk

Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whiskey I cry
If the whiskey don't kill me, I'll live till I die

My foot's in my stirrup, my bridle's in my hand
I'm leaving sweet Lillie, the fairest in the land
Her parents don't like me, they say I'm too poor
They say I'm unworthy to enter her door

It's a whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whiskey I cry
If I don't get rye whiskey, well, I think I will die

Sweet milk when I'm hungry, rye whiskey when I'm dry
If a tree don't fall on me, I'll live till I die
I'll buy my own whiskey, I'll make my own stew
If I get drunk, madam, it's nothing to you

Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whiskey I cry
If a tree don't fall on me, I'll live till I die

I'll drink my own whiskey, I'll drink my own wine
Some ten thousand bottles I've killed in my time
I've no wife to quarrel, no babies to bawl
The best way of living is no wife at all

Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whiskey I cry
If a tree don't fall on me, I'll live till I die

Way up on Clinch Mountain I wander alone
I'm as drunk as the devil, oh, let me alone
You may boast of your knowledge an' brag of your sense
'Twill all be forgotten a hundred years hence

Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, you're no friend to me
You killed my poor daddy, God damn you, try me

|6.21.05 @ 2:48PM|#

I tried it once a few months ago, and I still have ~90% of my vision! ***


*** (with corrective lenses!)

|6.21.05 @ 3:09PM|#

But smacky, was it worth giving up the opportunity to wear cool hornrim cat-eye glasses? You should have listened to Nancy Reagan and Just Said No.

|6.21.05 @ 3:18PM|#

Jennifer,

Try saying no to a 300-lb., lumberjack-size, old-school, backwoods Slavic relative who personally knew the person who brewed the hooch.*** Trust me, I declined him at least 10 times, until all the men at the bar got on my case to "be a man" and drink it. (The irony being that I was the only female being pressured to imbibe the stuff, while half of the men present wouldn't touch it themselves.)


*** Actually succeeding in getting your own way is probably impossible by some social custom somewhere in Slovenia.

|6.21.05 @ 3:30PM|#

Some like The JUG OF PUNCH....

And if I get drunk, well the money's me own
And them don't like me they can leave me alone
I'll tune my fiddle and I'll rosin my bow
And I'll be welcome wherever I go.

While some prefer The Real Old Mountain Dew.

It's all good!

Kevin

|6.21.05 @ 4:32PM|#

E. Steven, that isn't one song, that's about 20 songs put together.

|6.21.05 @ 7:29PM|#

--E. Steven, that isn't one song, that's about 20 songs put together.

It's an old song. Really old. Like Jeffersonian era old. So a few verses got added along the way. Tex Ritter did the best known version but my favorite is by Nick Cave.

|6.22.05 @ 12:34AM|#

E. Steven:

Just in case you needed a few more verses of Rye Whiskey....

Kevin