Zhigulevskoe - one of the most famous beers, which smoothly migrated from the Soviet era to the shelves of modern stores. The uniqueness of this brand (it seems to me that a drink loved by many can be called that) is that it is not an officially registered trademark and does not belong to one specific company. Any brewer, on completely legal grounds, can call his beer Zhigulevsky.
Zhiguli Brewery (JSC Zhigulevskoe Pivo), to whom the brand owes its name, tried to defend in court his exclusive right to produce "Zhigulevskoe beer", but the name turned out to be too common and the brewers too influential. As a result, the initial registration of the mark, carried out in 1992, was canceled by the Appellate Chamber of Rospatent.
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| Image from the official site OJSC "Zhigulevskoe beer" |
The history of beer begins in 1881, when "Association of the Zhiguli Brewery in Samara" releases the first batch of draft beer. The progenitor of Zhigulevsky was called "Viennese", also produced a variety "Viennese dining room".
Having survived the revolution and nationalization, the plant continued to produce such an important product for the proletariat. It is true that the working class did not want to drink "Viennese" beer, and in 1934, after visiting the plant by Anastas Mikoyan, at that time the people's commissar of the food industry, the beer was renamed Zhigulevskoye (the people's commissar, of course, came not to Samara, but to Kuibyshev). The very name of the beer and the name of the plant comes from the Zhiguli Mountains, which are located on the banks of the Volga, not far from Samara. Other types of beer were also renamed, for example, the former "Munich" became known as "Ukrainian".
Almost 80 % of beer consumed in the former USSR came from Zhigulevsky, whose recipe differed from what was called Vienna in the 19th century, but not by much. And now about 80 enterprises in Russia and the CIS continue to produce beer with this name. And what they do with the original recipe remains on their conscience.
