# Smirnoff Bottles



## CGR (Sep 23, 2010)

I am not a bottle collector or digger.  My uncle found these bottles and others doing landscaping cleanup on an island here in Bermuda.  I like some of the bottle shapes and was going to keep some of them to display and throw the others out.   However, I thought I should check before throwing them out whether anyone had any ideas if these are older bottles.  If so, I would consider donating them to the Bermuda National Trust.  Again, I am not interested in value or cost but just in understanding the dates of these bottles....whether 1950's, 1960's, 1970's.....2005, etc!!  I have attached photos.  Thank you for any insight you can give me.
 Regards,
 CGR


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## Poison_Us (Sep 24, 2010)

I would say mid. 1900s. being threaded.
 Smirnoff used to have their history online, so grabbed this off of wikipedia:

 Pyotr Smirnov founded his vodka distillery in Moscow in the 1860s  under the trading name of PA Smirnoff, pioneering charcoal filtration in  the 1870s, and becoming the first to utilize newspaper ads along with charitable contributions to the clergy to stifle anti-vodka sermons,  capturing two-thirds of the Moscow market by 1886. His brand was  reportedly the tsar's favorite. When he died, he was succeeded by his  third son Vladimir Smirnov  (? - 1939). The company flourished and produced more than 4 million  cases of vodka per year. In 1904 the Tsar nationalised the Russian vodka  industry and Vladimir Smirnoff was forced to sell his factory and  brand. During the October Revolution, of 1915 the Smirnoff family had to flee. Vladimir Smirnov re-established the factory in 1920 in Istanbul. Four years later he moved to LwÃ³w (formerly Poland, now Lviv, Ukraine) and started to sell the vodka under the contemporary French  spelling of the name, "Smirnoff". The new product was a success and by  the end of 1930 it was exported to most European countries. An  additional distillery was founded in Paris in 1925. In the 1930s Vladimir met Rudolph Kunett, a Russian who had emigrated  to America in 1920. The Kunett family had been a supplier of spirits to  Smirnoff in Moscow before the Revolution. In 1933 Vladimir sold Kunett  the right to begin producing Smirnoff vodka in North America. However,  the business in America was not as successful as Kunett had hoped. In  1938 Kunett couldn't afford to pay for the necessary sales licenses, and  contacted John Martin, president of Heublein,  who agreed to buy the rights to Smirnoff for the value of the  distilling equipment. His Board thought he was mad. Sales were very slow  until one day they ran out of corks and had to use whiskey corks  instead. In Kentucky sales rocketed as the distributor started marketing  Smirnoff as 'white whiskey, no taste, no smell'. After the war, John  Martin was sitting in a bar with a friend and a girlfriend. The  girlfriend owned a ginger beer brand which wasn't selling and the friend  had a stock of copper mugs which he also couldn't sell. They mixed  Smirnoff with the ginger beer in a copper mug, added lime and the Moscow  Mule was born. In 1982, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company acquired Heublein Inc. for $1.4 billion dollars. RJR Nabisco sold the division to Grand Metropolitan in 1987.[3] Grand Metropolitan merged with Guinness to form Diageo in 1997.

 You would have to look on the base of the bottle to see if there is a makers mark.  If so, that would tell you the time line and origin of the bottle.


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