Rheingold Corp. - Specimen Stock Certificate

Specimen Stock printed by Security-Columbian Banknote Company.

Rheingold Brewery was a New York State brewery operating from 1883 to 1976. Founded by Samuel Liebmann as S. Liebmann Brewery, Rheingold held 35% of the state's beer market at its peak. The Rheingold Beer brand was briefly revived by F.X. Matt Brewing Co. The beer's name is an allusion to Germany's Rhein river.

The company was sold by the founding Jewish American Liebmann family in 1963. According to The New York Times, "Rheingold Beer was once a top New York brew, guzzled regularly by a loyal cadre of workingmen, who would just as soon have eaten nails as drink another beer maker's suds." In 1966 it introduced Gablinger's Beer, one of the first reduced calorie beers, which was brewed using a process originated by chemist Dr. Hersch Gablinger of Basel, Switzerland. Rheingold shut down operations in 1976, when they were unable to compete with large national breweries, as corporate consolidation and the rise of national breweries led to the demise of dozens of regional breweries. The company's headquarters was in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. Today, the brewery site is an apartment complex. When Nat King Cole became the first major black entertainer to host a television show, advertisers stayed away — but not Rheingold, the New York regional sponsor for Cole's show. As early as 1965, Rheingold aired television ads featuring African American, Puerto Rican, and Asian actors to appeal to its racially diverse customer base. They also sponsored The Jackie Robinson Show, which aired on 660 WRCA radio in New York City on Sunday evenings between 6:30 and 7 PM during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Les Paul recorded a very popular radio commercial for Rheingold in 1951. Rheingold was the official beer of the New York Mets, and its advertisements featured John Wayne, Jackie Robinson, Sarah Vaughan and the Marx Brothers. Humorist and radio personality Jean Shepherd was the radio spokesman for Rheingold's radio ads on New York Mets broadcasts in the 1970s. William Black, founder of Chock Full o Nuts, in 1974, despite having no experience in the industry, purchased the ailing beer brewing firm Rheingold for $1. He failed to turn the company around, and in 1977 sold it to Christian Schmidt Brewing Company of Philadelphia. The company shut down four years after the construction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center was completed. During the cleanup of the World Trade Center site following the collapse of the towers on September 11, 2001, numerous Rheingold beer cans were found in the rubble, having been hidden in the beams of the building decades earlier by construction workers who had drunk the beers on the job. Coincidentally, exactly 12 years before the 9/11 attack, on September 11, 1989, the New York Times had published an article that included an old (circa 1960s) radio jingle for Rheingold beer: My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer. Think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer. It's not bitter, not sweet; it's the dry flavored treat. Won't you try extra dry Rheingold beer? The Rheingold jingle was set to music written by Émile Waldteufel. It is based on his Estudiantina Waltz, Op. 191. According to an October 18, 1999, New York Observer article, Mike Mitaro's Rheingold Brewing Company LLC bought the brand in 1998. Walter Liebmann, a director of the new company, is a relative of Rheingold's founding family. When Rheingold re-launched, they revived the Miss Rheingold pageant. The new Miss Rheingold contestants no longer wore ball gowns and white gloves; "They had tattoos. They were pierced. They were badasses." In 2003, The Village Voice noted Rheingold for "the best marketing campaign co-opting hipster drinking habits." In 2004, Rheingold stirred controversy in New York City with a series of ads which mock New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ban on smoking in bars and enforcement of city laws which prohibit dancing in bars which do not have a "cabaret license." Bloomberg responded by drinking Coors in public. In 2005, Drinks Americas of Wilton, Connecticut, purchased Rheingold Brewing. Drinks Americas has reformulated the Rheingold product for distribution throughout the US. The formulated beer was introduced to the New York Metropolitan Area market, as well as Cincinnati, Ohio, and Georgia, in August 2010.

In 1940, Philip Liebmann, great-grandson of the founder, Samuel Liebmann, started the "Miss Rheingold" pageant as the centerpiece of its marketing campaign. Beer drinkers voted each year on the young lady who would be featured as Miss Rheingold in advertisements. In the 1940s and 1950s in New York, "the selection of Miss Rheingold was as highly anticipated as the race for the White House." The first Miss Rheingold was Spanish-born Jinx Falkenburg. Future NBC television personality Robbin Bain was crowned in 1959. Two of the final winners were actresses Emily Banks (1960) and Celeste Yarnall (1965), both of whom had featured guest roles as yeomen on separate episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series. A number of Miss Rheingold runner-ups achieved success in show business, including Jean Moorhead and Suzanne Alexander and Robbin Bain.

Read More

Read Less