When you have premium brands, you have to have the right balance of communicating all of your values.

Considering that Americans are now moving away from whiskey, moving away from brown spirits in general, I believe that they will all join Russians who drink vodka straight. They will sip it like cognac.

Wherever I am, I start my day, it's the same. I'm not an early bird. I'm not waking up at five o'clock, six o'clock; it's usually seven-thirty, eight o'clock, and I will then read the newspapers, emails from around the world and make phone calls.

We buy the most expensive grain available growing on the best part of Russian land called black soil. We also play close attention to the purity of the water - we get it from Lake Ladoga. We store it ourselves to specific conditions. We carefully manage distillation at my distillery in Moscow.

I launched Imperia at the Statue of Liberty because I wanted to use something symbolic. I like American society because it always wants to do something new and better.

Russians really needed a product that would be not as strong as vodka and not as feminine as cheap sparkling wine, so Martini was a good solution.