The accidental entrepreneur and a vodka that survived the Bolsheviks
Dan Edelstyn's story is a bit like Borat in reverse. The 36-year-old film-maker from Hackney went to Ukraine two years ago to make "cultural learnings" about his family's forgotten Jewish history but has ended up an accidental entrepreneur, by reviving his family's long-lost vodka business.
After several false starts, Edelstyn stumbled across a distillery that had been seized from his family by the Bolsheviks, which was, incredibly, still in operation. But both the distillery and the local town, Douboviazovka, were struggling to survive. Edelstyn saw a business opportunity that could also revitalise the local economy and broaden the appeal of his film.
"It's been a wonderfully spontaneous path," says Edelstyn. "I'm a storyteller, not a businessman, and I never set out to do this." Let's hope the vodka is as good as his story, because his family survived some of the most turbulent bits of 20th-century history, covering their tracks by crossing borders, changing names and religions.
Edelstyn has been posting episodic footage of these exploits on the Babelgum website, under the title How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire, and will edit this footage, and more, into a full-length documentary feature to be broadcast on More4 next year. Meanwhile, he's just managed to keep the project afloat with advances, grants and auctioning lots each comprising 1 per cent of equity in the vodka business on eBay. And his fraught life is further complicated by the fact that his chief collaborator, designer and camera operator — his wife, Hilary Powell — has just given birth to their first child, Esmé.
Starting a vodka import business has been a steep learning curve but marketing experts and potential backers in London assured Edelstyn that the novelty of Ukrainian vodka, coupled with the intriguing "backstory", would make it saleable, but only if it also tasted good. There followed several botched attempts to get the recipe right.
He was also advised to lose the fur hat and the "independent documentary film-maker clothes" to convince his conservative countrymen that he meant business. But he has succeeded and is proud that 20 per cent of the profits will be used to create employment in Douboviazovka.
He's still holding his breath as there have been problems with the design of the bottle, the label, the cork and the cork-wrapping and the cardboard boxes, but at last the first batch of Zorokovich 1917 Vodka goes on sale at Selfridges on September 1 at £29.99 a bottle.
To watch the series, go to babelgum.com/vodkaempire
