AS A. Le Coq

AS A. Le Coq

Note: AS Tartu Õlletehas changed its name to AS A. Le Coq Tartu Õlletehas in October 2004 after changing its profile from a beer producer to a producer of a wide range of beverages. The aim of changing the name was to bring AS Tartu Õlletehas and AS Ösel Foods under the common business name of A. Le Coq in 2007. In 1826, Justus Reinhold Schramm established the first Estonian brewery in the City of Tartu. Upon his death in 1860, his son, Eduard Anton Justus Schramm, started the construction of a new modern brewery at the corner of Rüütli and Küütri Streets that was completed in 1875. In 1879, a large beer cellar, the present northern cellar, was built in the Tähtvere District. In 1884, Moritz Friedrich became a new owner of the brewery. He decided to erect a modern large-scale facility on the plot of land in Tähtvere. The factory buildings were completed in 1898 and they have more or less been preserved up to the present day. At the same time, M. Friedrich established a joint-stock company called 'Actien-Gesellschaft der Bier- und Meth-Brauerei und Destillatur 'Tivoli.' The plant had its own ships on Lakes Peipsi and Võrtsjärv, and its own railway carriages that transported goods to the departments in St. Petersburg, Pskov, Võru, Valga and Viljandi. The good quality of the 'Tivoli' products earned them gold medals at the 1903 and 1910 Liivimaa trade fairs. In 1913, 'Tivoli' was acquired by the company A. Le Coq & Co. The A. Le Coq company was founded by Albert Le Coq, a Belgian tradesman, in London in 1807. The company was in the business of bottling the output of local breweries and marketing them to Russia. The so-called Russian imperial porter, a dark and strong porter, specially brewed for export that attained especially excellent quality while maturing during the long marine route, became the best-known of the beers. During the Russian-Japanese War the A. Le Coq company made generous porter donations to the Russian military hospitals and as a reward was granted the right to supply the imperial court with its beer. Naturally, there were abundant forgers for these top-selling products. Moreover, the forgers started to use the A.Le Coq trademark on their bottle labels. Finally, the owners of the company decided to establish their own porter brewery in Russia to be able to better compete with the unfair competition. A suitable brewery was found in Tartu, where Mr. Friedrich, who had reached a respectable age, was aiming to sell his large-scale enterprise. The 'Tivoli' local brewery became AS A. Le Coq on 22 April 1913. Herbert Oscar Sillem, who became the plant manager, laid the main emphasis on the production of the company's speciality, 'Imperial Extra Double Stout.' It was marketed in 0.38 l porter bottles in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Odessa, Baku, Minsk and many other cities from Siberia to the Caucasus on top of the whole Baltic region.