Fearing a monopoly within the vodka industry, Russia’s czarist regime tried to control it, with disastrous results. A black market soon emerged with cheaper, “unregulated” vodka that often had the same healthful benefits as turpentine. The Bolsheviks did the same thing and it wasn’t pretty. As a former colleague and Russian émigré once told me, “Stolichnaya was s—t.” (It’s gotten a lot better.) And in this country Prohibition brought to an abrupt end our drinking culture—but it did wonders for Al Capone. Ever since, the liquor industry has done its best to preempt government intervention by instituting its own requirements, a code of conduct, if you will.