It also sponsored the Smirnoff Underbelly, a major venue at the Edinburgh Fringe. The Smirnoff company had the naming rights to the Smirnoff Music Centre, a concert amphitheater in Dallas, Texas, from 2000-08. Grand Metropolitan merged with Guinness to form Diageo in 1997.Дuring the 1990s, one of Pyotr Smirnov's descendants started producing Smirnov (РЎРјРёСЂРЅРѕРІСЉ) vodka in Russia, claiming to be 'The Only Real Smirnov.' After a number of lawsuits, Smirnoff successfully reclaimed its trademark, while in 2006 Diageo concluded a joint venture deal with the Smirnov company. In 1985 Heublein Corporate Audit Manager Hanson J Kan had recommended to Heublein that it acquire the Grand Metropolitan IDV Smirnoff licensee and its global locations. RJR Nabisco sold the division to Grand Metropolitan in 1987. Reynolds Tobacco Company acquired Heublein Inc. Sales picked up considerably after Heublein advertised it as a 'white whiskey' with 'no taste, no smell' sealed with whiskey corks. Americans were traditionally whiskey drinkers unfamiliar with vodka and so sales were slow. Using the $14,000 that the Heublein company made from a new product that ended up saving them from bankruptcy, Martin bought the rights to Smirnoff in 1939. By 1938, Kunett could not afford the sales licenses, and contacted John Martin, president of Heublein, a company that specialized in the import and export of liquors and foreign foods. However, the business in North America was not as successful as Kunett had hoped. Kunett then returned to the United States, quit his sales job, and established his first North American distillery in Bethel, Connecticut, after the end of Prohibition in 1933. In 1933, Vladimir sold Kunett the rights to Smirnoff vodka production and sales in North America. The Kunett family had been a supplier of grain to Smirnov in Moscow before the Revolution. In the 1930s, Vladimir met Rudolph Kunett, a Russian who had emigrated in the 1920s to New York, and had succeeded in business. Although an additional distillery was founded in Paris in 1925, sales remained far less than that produced in Russia. It sold marginally well but not nearly as it had in Russia prior to 1904. Four years later he moved to LwГіw (formerly Poland, now Lviv, Ukraine). In 1920, Vladimir Smirnov established a factory in Constantinople (present day Istanbul). During the October Revolution of 1917, the Smirnov family fled the country. When the Tsar nationalized the Russian vodka industry in 1904, Vladimir Smirnov was forced to sell his factory and the brand. The company flourished and produced more than four million cases of vodka per year.

When Pyotr died, his third son Vladimir succeeded him.

Russian royalty reportedly regarded Smirnov as a favorite. Pyotr Arsenyevitch Smirnov (9 January 1831 вЂ“ 29 November 1898) founded his vodka distillery in Moscow under the trade name PA Smirnov in 1864, pioneered charcoal filtration in the 1870s, and by 1886 had captured two-thirds of the market in Moscow by virtue of the first use of newspaper advertising while suppressing clerical calls for temperance by generously contributing to the clergy.

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