Imperial Prix 1912 Caviar and the DARTZ Gastronomé Department

DARTZ did not plan a food department. As it says itself, it happened organically.

A bowl of golden caviar, 1912

After André Nágel drove a Russo-Balt 3,257 km from St Petersburg to Monaco for the 1912 Monte Carlo Rally, he received an award for endurance, and an honorary gift: a golden caviar bowl, the Imperial Prix 1912, presented at a dinner on 23 February 1912. Caviar was a favourite at the Tsar’s tables, DARTZ says, but for the “golden” driver it was served with natural gold. Read Nágel’s story.

Imperial Prix 1912

DARTZ turned the story into a product: Imperial Prix 1912 sturgeon caviar with gold, made, DARTZ says, in Riga, the city where Nágel’s car was built. It is supplied to the owners of DARTZ cars during the warranty period, in jars of gunmetal, silver and gold, packed in boxes of natural wood such as rosewood and Karelian birch.

Cannes, 2015

In 2015 a set of DARTZ car-ownership privileges was sold at the Cannes Film Festival Auction at the Hôtel Barrière Le Majestic, with RussoBaltique vodka and caviar on show. DARTZ points out that it was not random: the first Russo-Balt cars visited the Côte d’Azur in 1912, when Nágel and Mikhailov drove on to Cannes and Nice after the rally.

Where it began: the Museum of Vodka

The Gastronomé Department started with the International Museum of Vodka in Riga. It began in a small room in 2004 and now holds about 4,000 bottles in 400 square metres. It is a non-profit, independent museum that relies on donations from vodka lovers around the world, who send a rare or local bottle with a note about its story. Every supporter, DARTZ says, gets a photo session with their vodka by the artist A. C’machoff.

It was there, DARTZ says, that DARTZ RussoBaltique vodka was created, the vodka that comes as a set with its cars.

Prowodnik Étoile

The latest name in the department is an old one. Prowodnik was once, DARTZ says, one of the three largest tyre makers of its day, a company of the ancestors’ era destroyed and forgotten for decades. DARTZ is reviving the name, not on tyres, but on what it calls the Gastronomé battlefield: Prowodnik Étoile.