The relationship between a Russian and a bottle of vodka is almost mystical.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There are a lot of people who are trying hard to sell themselves as Russian vodkas.
Considering that Americans are now moving away from whiskey, moving away from brown spirits in general, I believe that they will all join Russians who drink vodka straight. They will sip it like cognac.
I'm not against vodka - they just asked us. They put out some story about us entertaining international celebrities with vodka, which of course wasn't true.
The key factor in the vodka category is smoothness, and smoothness is what our vodka has.
The Russian people get so insanely close to each other as friends. Their lives are interrelated so much on an everyday basis.
In the Russian experience, although the Russian state is oppressive, it is their state, it is part of their fabric, and so the relation between Russian citizens and their state is complicated.
I don't have any opinions about Russians. There are celebrity persons in each country. Different people do different things.
I feel very uneasy with a lot of aspects of the Russian life and the Russian people.
I had studied Russian in college. I had gotten into it first through literature and then just really found it kind of fascinating; of course, this was during the Cold War. So they were kind of the other great enemy that you grew up hearing about.
Russians really needed a product that would be not as strong as vodka and not as feminine as cheap sparkling wine, so Martini was a good solution.