{"id":118,"date":"2008-03-19T11:19:08","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T16:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeislikesciencefiction.com\/lifeislikescifi\/?p=118"},"modified":"2008-03-19T11:19:08","modified_gmt":"2008-03-19T16:19:08","slug":"new-ladies-vodka-gives-russian-doctors-a-headache","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeislikesciencefiction.com\/lifeislikescifi\/new-ladies-vodka-gives-russian-doctors-a-headache","title":{"rendered":"New ladies’ vodka gives Russian doctors a headache"},"content":{"rendered":"

Igor Volodin believes vodka is no more harmful than chocolate. He is proud to be the first Russian to produce the spirit in a special women’s version, designed to be sipped with salad after a workout in the gym.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Touted as a glamour product for upwardly mobile women in booming Russia, Damskaya or “Ladies” vodka worries doctors, who fear a fresh wave of female alcoholics in a country already suffering one of the world’s worst drink problems.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Moscow Serbsky Institute for Social and Forensic Psychiatry says Russia has 2.5 million registered alcoholics, but adds the real figure is seven times higher – more than 10 per cent of Russia’s population of 142 million.<\/p>\n

Yuri Sorokin, a psychologist running a Moscow rehabilitation centre for drug addicts and alcoholics, said 60 percent of those he treats for alcoholism are women, including the wives of Russian millionaires.<\/p>\n

“I believe that female alcoholism is a huge problem in Russia. I believe it is as huge and hidden as the underwater part of an iceberg,” he said.<\/p>\n

Adverts for the new “Ladies” vodka show the elegant, violet-tinted bottle wearing a pleated white skirt which is blown upwards to reveal the label.<\/p>\n

The images confront commuters on Moscow’s metro, grab the eye on the street and leap from the pages of women’s magazines.<\/p>\n

“Between us, girls…” runs the slogan on the adverts, which tout the product as an ideal tipple for hearty hen parties.<\/p>\n

“Women need a drink of their own,” said Volodin, sitting next to an array of his “Ladies” vodkas, which comes in lime, vanilla and almond flavours, or just straight for cocktails.<\/p>\n

“In Moscow, there are pink taxis for ladies, there are light cigarettes,” he said. “But there was no vodka, and we asked ourselves: ‘Why?’ … More people suffer from diabetes in Russia than from alcoholism, but no one bans chocolate advertisements.”<\/p>\n

Sales on Russia’s vodka market are estimated to be worth around $US15 billion ($NZ18.64 billion) a year, with a total annual volume of some 2.2 billion litres, Volodin said.<\/p>\n

Annual market growth in value is seen at 15 per cent, he said, thanks to rising incomes and higher sales of premium vodkas like “Ladies”.<\/p>\n

Volodin heads the Deyros company, which has been selling strong spirits on the Russian market for more than 10 years.<\/p>\n

“Ladies”, launched in December, is produced at a distillery in Russia’s second city of St Petersburg and retails at around 300 roubles ($US12.50 or $NZ15.54) in upmarket shops in big cities. Volodin is targeting successful, well-educated, married women with money.<\/p>\n

“Of course, $12 per bottle is too expensive for a village woman,” Volodin said, forecasting March sales of “Ladies” at 115,000 bottles and putting the 2008 full-year figure at over 2 million. “But we can’t make bad vodka for women.”<\/p>\n

Volodin says his vodka is pure and free of by-products, like fusel oils, which can cause a heavy hangover. He says because of its mellow taste, it can be taken with salads and other light meals, even by those regularly working out in gyms.<\/p>\n

Russia, buoyed by windfall revenues for oil, gas and metals exports, has enjoyed its biggest economic boom in a generation. Wages in the cash-laden economy have rocketed.<\/p>\n

But high salaries and growing consumption of expensive alcohol have not led to moderation in drinking, said psychologist Sorokin.<\/p>\n

The joblessness and despair of Russia’s wild capitalism of the 1990s have now been replaced by the psychological vacuum of the newly-rich, he said.<\/p>\n

Olga, a woman in her 20s, was buying a bottle of “Ladies” in an expensive supermarket in Moscow for a party with her friends.<\/p>\n

“I saw the ad in the metro and decided to taste it,” she said. “I just loved the design.”<\/p>\n

Sorokin said he expected an influx of new patients in about six months.<\/p>\n

“When such strong marketing experts are involved, I will never be jobless,” he sighed.<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Igor Volodin believes vodka is no more harmful than chocolate. He is proud to be the first Russian to produce the spirit in a special women’s version, designed to be sipped with salad after a workout in the gym. Touted as a glamour product for upwardly mobile women in booming Russia, Damskaya or “Ladies” vodka […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-is-like-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeislikesciencefiction.com\/lifeislikescifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeislikesciencefiction.com\/lifeislikescifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeislikesciencefiction.com\/lifeislikescifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeislikesciencefiction.com\/lifeislikescifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeislikesciencefiction.com\/lifeislikescifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeislikesciencefiction.com\/lifeislikescifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeislikesciencefiction.com\/lifeislikescifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeislikesciencefiction.com\/lifeislikescifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeislikesciencefiction.com\/lifeislikescifi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}