A traditional honey spirit, a Pomeranian distillery and a name that does two jobs.

Krupnik is two things at once. As a common noun it is the name of a traditional sweet drink of the old Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, made from grain spirit and honey, often with herbs and spices; English Wikipedia says it was known by the 16th century or earlier, that Lithuanians call it krupnikas, and that in Poland it belongs to the wider family of nalewki. The same word is also the name of a well-known Polish barley soup. Many households and small producers make a krupnik of their own, so the word on its own does not point to one company.

As a brand, Krupnik belongs to Premium Distillers, a Polish spirits producer that is part of the United Beverages Group. Premium Distillers sells two families under the name: Krupnik Vodka, a clear vodka, and Krupnik Liqueurs, which include a honey-based Krupnik Old Liqueur alongside fruit and cream liqueurs. The company says its distillery in Starogard Gdański produces and bottles all of its spirits.

The company’s own pages give the brand more than one starting point. Its liqueur page says the roots of Krupnik go back to the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, when it was a drink of honey, herbs and spices, while its “about” page says the brand’s history dates back to the 19th century. What is easier to date is the place. Premium Distillers says Herman Winkelhausen founded a distillery in Starogard Gdański, in Pomerania south of Gdańsk, in 1846, making vodka, liqueurs and brandy, and that by 1907 the plant was producing more than ten million litres of alcohol a year. In 2026 the company is marking the distillery’s 180th anniversary.

From a liqueur Poles knew to a clear vodka that sold in millions of cases.

For much of the 20th century the distillery was in state hands. The company’s timeline says the State Treasury took it over in 1925 under the State Spirits Monopoly, that it was set on fire during the Second World War and rebuilt in 1945, and that it then became the state-owned Starogardzkie Zakłady Przemysłu Spirytusowego Polmos, one of the regional plants of the Polmos system. Its main office building on Skarszewska Street dates from 1976, the company says.

The modern Krupnik brand took shape after privatisation. The Treasury agreed in 2001 to sell the plant to Belvedere Dystrybucja, part of the French Belvédère group, and from 1 October 2003 it traded as Destylarnia Sobieski, according to the company. Belvédère, founded in 1991, also owned Sobieski vodka. The business daily Parkiet reported that, before the group’s Sobieski unit put a clear vodka on sale under the Krupnik name, Poles knew the name mainly from liqueurs, and that the company chose it over an entirely new brand because its research showed how deeply the name was rooted with consumers.

The move worked quickly. Rzeczpospolita reported in December 2011 that Krupnik had become the best-selling vodka in Poland. In the same interview the culinary historian Jarosław Dumanowski of Nicolaus Copernicus University argued that the vodka was a plain clear spirit carrying the name rather than a true krupnik, which he described as a drink of honey, herbs and spirit. Drinks International reported in May 2012, using Euromonitor figures, that Krupnik vodka grew from 1.9 million nine-litre cases in 2010 to 4.5 million in 2011, placing it among the world’s largest spirit brands; Euromonitor’s analyst credited heavy promotion, including a lemon-flavoured version. English Wikipedia says that in 2014 Krupnik ranked as the eighth best-selling vodka brand in the world by volume.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all German and Polish spirits and liqueurs: Asbach, Berentzen, Underberg, Killepitsch, Mampe, Żołądkowa Gorzka and Krupnik. Spirits and liqueur brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a bar shelf.

A spirit or liqueur brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its spirits are actually distilled and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its spirits are made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From Belvédère to Marie Brizard, and on to United Beverages.

The owner’s name changed before the brand changed hands. French Wikipedia says Belvédère became Marie Brizard Wine & Spirits (MBWS) on 1 July 2015, moving its head office to Ivry-sur-Seine, and that Sobieski and Krupnik were among its core brands. MBWS then withdrew from Poland in stages. It completed the sale of its Polish wholesale arm, Sobieski Trade, to United Beverages in November 2019, according to its stock-exchange announcement. In July 2020 it agreed to sell MBWS Polska and part of the Polmos Łańcut distillery to the same buyer; Drinks International reported that the Sobieski vodka brand itself would stay with MBWS, with United Beverages producing it. FoodBev reported in October 2020 that the sale had been finalised.

MBWS Polska is now Premium Distillers Sp. z o.o., which describes itself as the former Marie Brizard Wine and Spirits Polska and dates its ownership of the Starogard Gdański plant to 2020. The company says it exports to more than 25 countries, and English Wikipedia’s Polmos article lists the Starogard plant as the owner of the Krupnik brand. Premium Distillers says a revitalisation of the site began in 2022, bringing renovated buildings, a tasting room and a mural on the office building recalling the factory’s history. Its offices are in Warsaw; its production is in Starogard Gdański.

One practical note: because “krupnik” is also a generic drink and a soup, searches turn up home recipes and products from other makers, and the domain krupnik.pl belongs to an unrelated travel blog. The brand’s own pages sit on the Premium Distillers site.

For a design guide, Krupnik shows how a brand can borrow the authority of a traditional drink’s name, and how the same name can then carry a clear vodka, fruit liqueurs and a honey liqueur side by side. Compare Żołądkowa Gorzka, another Polish name stretched from a flavoured spirit to a clear vodka, and Żubrówka, the bison-grass vodka. For this guide we use honey amber, beeswax and Pomeranian brick with a book serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Krupnik’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.