““The story goes that Russian winter clothes, when introduced into a common latrine, start fermenting when in contact with urine and feces and where there is fermentation there is alcohol too. Nobody knows who it was who dared to boil and then distill this fermenting sewage but someone must have because cheap alcohol lovers got to drink it. "They probably produce it industrially”, my father once said, obviously full of admiration for the ingenuity of the people who made booze from clothes and shit.””