On Jagiellońska Street in Szczecin stand buildings that for more than a hundred years changed their purpose: first a brewery, then a distillery of vodkas and brandies, and after the war spirits works. In their cellars starka matured, a rye vodka aged in oak barrels. Below are facts from the history of this place and of the drink itself, without any encouragement to drink it.

The Victoria brewery on Turnerstrasse

According to Wikipedia the complex was built in 1862-1863 at what was then Turnerstrasse 10/11. The application for permission to build the brewery was submitted to the building police by Herman Koch. In 1870 the brewery took the name Victoria. It was later extended with a restaurant pavilion, a shooting range, a bowling alley, a park with a place for an orchestra and a beer hall. Beer production was halted by difficulties with raw materials, transport and labour during the First World War: the brewery stopped working in 1917.

After the buildings were taken over in 1920 they were turned into the vodka and brandy distillery Carl Wilhelm Kemp AG, belonging to the Rückforth concern. According to Wikipedia production started again in 1922-1924 and continued until the Second World War. The archives and the most important equipment were then taken deep into Germany, and after the war production was resumed in Rostock.

The Polish Spirits Monopoly in the former brewery cellars

The buildings were not destroyed during the war, and the cellars remained untouched. In January 1946 they were taken over by the Polish Spirits Monopoly. Production started in March of that year, at first on two manual production tables. In the following years new equipment was bought, bottling tables were built, and the number of employees exceeded 300. From 1991 the distillery was independent, and in 1998 it was converted into a joint-stock company.

Starka: what it is and where its tradition comes from

According to Wikipedia starka is a traditional dry rye vodka, produced mainly in Poland, Belarus and Lithuania, and in Russia. According to the same article it has been known since at least the 15th century. Tradition says that after the birth of a firstborn son rye spirit was sealed in an oak barrel and the barrel was opened at his wedding. This is a tradition handed down, not a documented rule. Michał Kryspin Pawlikowski put the recipe thus: a new oak barrel, unrefined spirit and a time of the order of one generation.

The production uses unrectified rye spirit, which matures in oak barrels. The differences between the varieties result mainly from the length of ageing.

Szczecin starka: dates and discrepancies

Wikipedia states that starka production in Szczecin began in 1947. The first half-litre five-year-old bottles saw the light of day in 1955 according to the article on Polmos Szczecin, and, according to the article on starka, which cites a press article from 2010, in 1952. Two years after the first batch a ten-year-old variety appeared, in 1972 a fifteen-year-old one, and then twenty-, twenty-five- and thirty-year-old ones. In 1997 a starka was presented that had been kept in the cellars for fifty years from the time it was poured into the barrels. The last variety, an eighteen-year-old, was introduced in 2007 on the occasion of the finale of The Tall Ships' Races.

According to Wikipedia all the Szczecin varieties were made from unrectified rye spirit, which was aged in oak barrels in cellars with a constant temperature of about 16 degrees Celsius. The alcohol content was 50 per cent. The older the starka, the more intense the colour.

After 1991

Wikipedia states that in 2010 the distillery went into liquidation bankruptcy, and in 2012 the works were converted into the company Fabryka Wódek Starka. The article on starka describes the later fortunes of the company and its trademarks, including a bankruptcy declared in 2023. The dates in the two articles are not fully consistent with each other, so for specific dates it is worth turning to the press sources cited in the footnotes.