Bunhill: Such spirit

MOSCOW, I hear, is increasingly a frontier town with rising crime, a roaring black market and a flood of faked goods bearing brand-names from the West. Now foreign distillers are pumping in brands of vodka with peculiarly Anglo-Russian names to challenge the traditional Stolichnaya and Moskovaya brands.

At least a dozen US brands are on sale in the Russian capital, led by the ultimately trendy Stroganoff and Orloff. Not to be outdone, Greenall, the Cheshire brewer and distiller, has jumped in with a brand called Selekt. No stranger to vodka, Greenall used to make the Vladivar brand before selling it to Whyte & Mackay. Flush with its new success, Greenall is about to try a gin on the Russians, enticingly named Richmond Dry Gin.