spirtnn.ru was the website of the Chugunovsky distillery (спиртзавод «Чугуновский») from Vorotynsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast[1]. The plant presented itself as "the main budget-forming enterprise of Vorotynsky District" and as part of a holding formed by the Nizhny Novgorod closed joint-stock company "ROOM" (ЗАО «РООМ»)[1]. The surviving snapshots of the home page span four months: from November 28, 2004[1] to March 7, 2005[3].

What the site looked like

It was a small corporate business-card site. The menu had six items: "home," "About the plant," "News," "Products," "Our needs," "Visitors"[1]. The home page was dominated by the text of the "About the plant" section, with the same insert repeated twice, above and below it, under the heading "This is important to know...": "Chugunovsky distillery is the main budget-forming enterprise of Vorotynsky District. In 2001 ZAO 'ROOM' received an Honorary Diploma from the government of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast"[1].

The page footer carried an address — "Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Vorotynsky District, village of Yuzhny" — and a phone number, +7 (8312) 35-97-25[1]. The same footer credited the developer: "Design: www.nnov.ru"[1].

The page title called the enterprise "OOO Spirtzavod 'Chugunovsky'," while the body text twice called it "OAO Spirtzavod 'Chugunovsky'"[1]; the discrepancy persisted across all the snapshots. Between November 2004[1], February[2] and March 2005[3], the home page text did not change by a single word — despite the menu listing a "News" section.

What the site said about production

According to the home page, the plant was founded in 1913 and was "one of the oldest enterprises of Russia's alcohol industry"[1]. Its products were named as ethyl spirit of the "Extra" and "Lux" grades, ether-aldehyde fractions and fusel oils; the production byproduct was named as barda (stillage), a "livestock feed product"[1]. The page put the distance to Nizhny Novgorod at 140 km[1], and named the raw material as grain "grown mainly in the fields of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast"[1].

The ZAO "ROOM" holding, of which the plant was, per the site's text, a part, was called "the leader of the Nizhny Novgorod region in the production and sale of vodka and vodka-based spirits"[1]. The rest of the home page consisted of general statements about modernizing the production process, "raising the overall culture of production," and social protection for workers[1]. The surviving snapshots contain no output figures, no names of managers, and no history of the plant beyond a single date.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

spirtnn.ru was not a notable site. It came to the attention of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day in 2004, but no votes are recorded for it in the contest's final table — zero[4]. It also has no measured place in the Counter.nn.ru ranking: no traffic that the counter could have registered has been recorded for the address (see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating).

This is a typical position for an industrial site in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the mid-2000s: the page was commissioned as a business card — judging by the credit in the footer, from the studio nnov.ru[1] — the address and phone number were posted, and no one came back to it afterward. Such a page was not meant to have an audience, and it did not try to compete for one.

How it closed

The last saved snapshot of the home page is dated March 7, 2005[3]; the web archive index holds only four records for this address in total, all falling within a span of less than four months. Judging by the archive, the site lived through a single winter.

A check carried out while preparing this article found that the domain spirtnn.ru no longer exists: the address leads nowhere and is not redirected to any other site. What became of the Chugunovsky distillery itself after 2005 cannot be traced from the available material — all that remains of its presence online is this business-card page with a phone number in the 8312 area code.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, February 2005 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, March 2005 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Voting results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)