A Warsaw vodka from 1928.

Luksusowa is a Polish potato vodka whose name means “luxury”; English Wikipedia cites a 1968 issue of the Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office for its English-market name, Luxury Vodka. Polish Wikipedia, citing Iwona Kienzler’s book series Kultowe marki, says production began in 1928 at the Wytwórnia Wódek, a vodka works on Ząbkowska Street in Warsaw.

The vodka moved west after the Second World War. When Poland’s borders were shifted westwards, English Wikipedia says, its production was moved to its current site in Zielona Góra. Both Wikipedias describe Luksusowa as made from potato spirit; English Wikipedia cites Stuart Walton’s 2009 book Vodka Classified for the point, and Polish Wikipedia says the recipe still rests on potato spirit and water drawn from deep wells.

For most of the postwar period the brand belonged to the state spirits industry. Polish Wikipedia sets out the steps. The state monopoly was revived after the war and the industry reorganised in 1951 and 1959; in 1973 a single Warsaw-based enterprise, PPS Polmos, was formed, and it operated until 1990. In 1991 it was split into 25 independent Polmos companies, all still allowed to make the same vodkas, Luksusowa among them. In 1999 the Polmos brand names were divided by tender, and Luksusowa went to the Zielona Góra company, Lubuska Wytwórnia Wódek Gatunkowych “Polmos.”

From Polmos to Pernod Ricard.

The Zielona Góra company was then sold to a Swedish buyer. On 16 January 2003 BeverageDaily reported that V&S Vin & Sprit, the Swedish group that owned Absolut, would buy 85 per cent of Polmos Zielona Góra from the Polish government, with an option on the remaining 15 per cent. The report noted that the company owned the brand rights to Luksusowa, one of the few Polish vodkas with some international presence, and expected the deal to be finalised in the first half of the year, subject to approval by the Polish interior and administration minister. As part of the agreement, it said, V&S committed to a development and investment programme at the company and agreed a social package with local trade unions. Polish Wikipedia says the company became part of V&S in 2003 and was renamed V&S Luksusowa Zielona Góra.

Five years later the whole Swedish group changed hands. The Swedish government’s intention to sell V&S to Pernod Ricard was announced on 31 March 2008, and the deal was approved and finalised on 24 July 2008, according to English Wikipedia’s article on Vin & Sprit, which lists V&S Luksusowa Zielona Góra among the group’s subsidiaries. The same transaction brought Absolut itself to the French group. Pernod Ricard has owned Luksusowa since 2008, through its Polish business, which also makes Wyborowa; English Wikipedia describes the brand as having been in continuous production since 1928.

The vodka is still made in Zielona Góra. In May 2023 the Polish trade paper Wiadomości Handlowe reported that Wyborowa Pernod Ricard had opened a new distribution centre at Nowy Kisielin, near Zielona Góra, and named Wyborowa, Luksusowa and Ostoya as vodkas produced at the company’s Zielona Góra plant. Pernod Ricard’s Polish website notes that its operations director, Artur Otta, became plant director at V&S Luksusowa in Zielona Góra in 2006.

Design and documentation.

The six brands in this group are spirits from northern and eastern Europe: Gammel Dansk, Malteserkreuz, Explorer, Purity, Luksusowa and Khortytsa. They span three kinds of drink — aquavit, a bitter and vodka — and spirits brands of this kind sit at many different points in the trade, from names that still carry a founder’s signature to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a state-run shop to a duty-free shelf.

A spirits brand’s identity is usually carried less by the liquid than by a bottle, a label and the place or story it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its spirit is 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 spirit is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A square bottle and a tall label.

Abroad, Luksusowa has been sold above all as a potato vodka. Polish Wikipedia stresses that its recipe still relies on potato spirit, which it says few vodkas now do, and English Wikipedia gives its producer as the formerly state-owned Polmos of Zielona Góra, now part of Pernod Ricard. English Wikipedia says the American importer W.J. Deutsch & Sons became its exclusive importer in the United States in 2010, and lists four versions: the clear original, a stronger Black at 50 per cent alcohol, a lemon-flavoured Citrus and a Wild Berry. Polish Wikipedia names the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Croatia, Israel and Australia among its export markets.

Its packaging has changed over time. Polish Wikipedia describes a bottle with a square base and a tall, narrow vertical label as the most distinctive features of the brand’s look, says the design has been changed several times, and dates the most recent new design it records to March 2010.

The brand’s history also shows how Polish vodka names outlived the state system that made them. After the 1991 break-up of Polmos, the same vodka could be made by several of the new companies until the 1999 tender gave each name a single owner; Luksusowa’s went to Zielona Góra, where it has stayed through two changes of foreign ownership.

For a design guide, Luksusowa shows how a state-era vodka name can survive privatisation and two foreign owners while keeping one town. Compare Wyborowa, its Pernod Ricard stablemate produced at the same Zielona Góra plant, and Chopin, another Polish potato vodka. For this guide we use a deep red, a silver grey and a potato cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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