Grain Waves

The superpowers vie over vodka

The U.S.S.R. and China are bristling again, but bordering countries can breathe easily--for the time being. The squabble is over vodka, specifically the 600,000 cases a year that are exported to the U.S. Although imports are a mere drop in the shaker compared with the total 30.7 million cases of vodka sold in the U.S. last year, the Soviets, with their Stolichnaya brand (on average, $10.50 for an 80-proof fifth), account for about 80% of import sales. Or did, until the invasion of Afghanistan set some flag-waving saloonkeepers to unclogging their drains with the stuff and many restaurants to tacking calligraphic RUSSIAN VODKA NOT SOLD HERE signs to their menus.

Other importers, like Sweden's Absolut and Poland's Wyborowa, were quick to seize the chance to increase their market share. But none was so aggressive as the Chinese brand Tsingtao, imported by Monarch Import Co. of New York from the Shandong province of northern China. Monarch took full-page ads in the New York Times offering Tsingtao as a punishing alternative to Stolichnaya and extolling the Chinese vodka's delicate taste, although some drinkers find it harsh. An 80-proof fifth sells for a few cents more than Stolichnaya. The copy of one scrappy ad last week had members of Moscow's Politburo smirking confidently that Americans would not "give up Russian vodka just as they haven't given up imported crude."

Emigres fleeing the 1917 Russian Revolution brought vodka to China, and 3 1/2 years ago, a brew called Great Wall made its appearance in the U.S. Tsingtao, from the same distillery, arrived last June. As to why ads are so pugnacious, Gad Romann, of Romann & Tannenholz, Tsingtao's agency, explained: "If you had an unheard-of brand, what would you do?"

For all the talk of boycotting Soviet spirits, however, there is not much evidence that sales are seriously falling. Some retailers claim that they are selling even more Stolichnaya by the case to hoarders who fear a permanent cutoff, or by the pint to those who dare not use it for entertaining. Ironically, one merchant noted that a brand left on the shelf in his store was Smirnoff, a domestic vodka distributed by Heublein. Says he: "People think it is Russian and they are refusing to buy it."

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