In the 19th century, the nobleman and entrepreneur Alphonse Poklevsky was known as the Drinking King and Wine Magnate of the Trans-Ural region. He began his career as a simple official in St. Petersburg, and in the 1830s became a special assignments officer under the governor-general of Western Siberia. It was then that he began to actively develop his ideas. At that time, the roads were in poor condition, and traveling between settlements took several days. Poklevsky quickly realized that rivers could be an excellent alternative to roads, and in 1843 he organized the first steamboat service on the Ob and Irtysh rivers. For a long time, he remained the sole monopolist in this field and amassed a significant fortune.

Later, Poklevsky switched to distilling production. He bought up bankrupt enterprises, invested in them, updated the equipment, and started production. He chose the city of Talitsa near Yekaterinburg as the main base for his business. The wine magnate of the Trans-Ural produced up to 800 thousand buckets of beer a year, offering various varieties: Bavarian, folk, 'export', Viennese, expeditionary, Russian, and table. The quality of his products was high, and Poklevsky's beer repeatedly won awards at exhibitions. The prices for his beer were affordable: a bucket of 'Russian' cost 1 ruble and 10 kopecks.

Alphonse Fomich was also actively involved in charity. He financed Ural hospitals, gymnasiums, and the construction of libraries. In Talitsa, he built and maintained a building for a male school. Poklevsky became the prototype of a character in the novel 'Bread' by Mamin-Sibiryak, where he was depicted under the surname Mai-Stabrovsky as a prominent merchant and a humane person. He left behind numerous enterprises and luxurious mansions. One of these mansions in Yekaterinburg now houses a museum, and for some time, Yakov Yurovsky, a participant in the execution of the royal family, lived there.