Vodka Perfect

Perfect Renaissance’s Israeli factory made about 40 kinds of alcoholic beverages, with unflavored and flavored vodka among its main products.[1] Vodka flavors included peach, lemon, and forest fruit; the wider beverage range included strawberry, coffee, mint, cherry, melon, and passion-fruit liqueurs.[1] Its vodka offerings were grouped into popular, premium, and super-premium levels, with bottle prices reported at approximately 30, 45, and 70 shekels respectively at the time of the factory profile.[1]

Perfect Renaissance’s owners, Arkady Kaufman and Boris Klinburg, allocated more than $3.5 million to establish a vodka factory in Israel and entrusted its management to Daniel Reznik, their childhood friend.[1] Reznik had managed their Kishinev vodka factory before returning to Israel.[1] He recalled learning about vodka from his grandfather, who managed a vodka factory in Yakutsk, and developing his knowledge through practical experience.[1]

Kaufman and Klinburg had made their money in American real estate and also owned a Romanian distillery that supplied alcohol to the group’s three factories in Moldova, Romania, and Israel.[1] The flagship Kishinev factory was reported to produce 40 million bottles annually and hold about half the Moldovan market, while the Romanian factory produced 4.5 million bottles annually, approximately 7% of its market.[1] Across the group, employment included 700 production workers and dozens of additional staff in distribution, exports, and administration; annual turnover was reported in the tens of millions of dollars.[1]

Two and a half years after production began, the Israeli factory’s annual turnover had reached 30 million shekels, and it employed 40 people.[1] The owners had completed plans to expand the factory to 2,500 square meters, with an additional investment of about $2 million.[1] A more advanced production line intended to double output was expected to open in January 2006; these were announced plans rather than confirmed completed improvements.[1]

Water used in the factory’s vodka-making process underwent four purification stages, including activated-carbon treatment and reverse osmosis.[1] Alcohol was then added in a measured proportion, followed where appropriate by flavor and color extracts.[1] After further filtration, the vodka rested in large tanks for periods ranging from a few days to a month, depending on the desired quality.[1]

Laboratory manager Natasha Buchbinder developed products and monitored vodka quality at the Or Akiva factory.[1] A wine-and-food technologist trained in Kishinev, she had made wine and cognac before immigrating to Israel in 1996.[1]

Production was automated, and each bottle was inspected under illuminated equipment for packaging defects or cloudy liquid.[1] If a foreign object or dull spot was detected, all bottles on the affected line would be emptied and the liquid sent through the factory’s full processing route again.[1] The packaging also incorporated a patented Italian cap intended, among other purposes, to prevent water from being injected into a bottle to dilute its contents.[1]

Perfect’s products reached approximately 10,000 sales points in Israel at the time of the factory profile, chiefly through the company’s own distribution network.[1] The factory had also recently signed an exclusive agreement with Willy-Food International for distribution to large retail chains, a channel the company expected to account for at least one-quarter of production.[1]

The company was discussing exports, and its own survey identified interest abroad in kosher vodka made in the Holy Land, particularly among ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in the United States.[1] In 2010, Perfect appeared alongside Alaska and Keglevich in coverage of proposed restrictions on nighttime alcohol sales as a vodka bought by young consumers whose budgets limited other choices.[2]

A September 2013 grocery-price comparison highlighted a wide retail disparity for Classic Perfect vodka: a 700-milliliter bottle was listed at 69.99 shekels at Yeinot Bitan, versus about 40.5 shekels at Victory and Rami Levy.[3] The same report said Yeinot Bitan had raised the price of the 1.75-liter bottle following the alcohol-pricing reform and suggested that the increase might be higher than warranted. However, it lacked a directly comparable price for that bottle size at other chains and did not establish conclusively that the increase was excessive.[3]