The main source of income for Emil Fyodorovich Meyerhold, the father of the famous actor and director Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold, was vodka production.

Emil Fyodorovich, with eagle-like facial features, thick wavy hair, and a bushy beard, resembled a hero from the legends of the Nibelungs. He was known for his fiery temperament, broad vision, and outstanding enterprise. Being a man of Western culture, he brought from his native Germany habits of comfort and a penchant for witty conversation. Emil fondly remembered his homeland and proudly kept a portrait of Bismarck with a personal autograph on his desk. His house, built from thick logs, reflected a love for strength and durability. Rare German engravings and oleographs, received as prizes from the magazine 'Niva', adorned the walls. In business, Emil Fyodorovich proved to be a good merchant, striving to make his vodka factory known beyond the Penza province.

Emil Meyerhold owned four houses, and the family lived in Penza. The facade of their house faced Lekarskaya Street, while the windows on the opposite side overlooked a spacious courtyard where the alcohol and vodka factory was located.

Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold, a Soviet actor and director, described his father's production: 'In the yard, huge tanks were filled with alcohol, while empty barrels, boxes, and baskets stood nearby. In large wooden troughs, cherries, black currants, and raspberries were primitively mashed for liqueurs. Glassware clinked as it was washed in metal basins, machines for bottling clattered, and the steam department's machine thumped.'

The famous writer and journalist Vladimir Alekseevich Gilyarovsky highly praised the factory's products. Recalling his days at the Penza theater and his meeting with Emil Fyodorovich, he wrote about how he was treated to vodka 'Uglevka' from Meyerhold's factory at Koshilev's restaurant, which, according to him, was better than all others, including Smirnov's products and those of the widow Popova.

In 1868, Emil Fyodorovich produced 10,000 buckets of liqueurs, rums, and infusions worth 45 thousand rubles in Penza. He had a branded store and a wholesale warehouse for alcoholic beverages, both domestic and foreign. However, by 1908, his trading house was declared insolvent. His co-founders were his wife Elizabeth Alvina Lyushigard and sons Albert and Arthur.

Since 1883, Emil Fyodorovich had been the provincial agent of the mutual livestock insurance society. The Meyerhold family was known for their charity. In 1880, Emil donated 1,000 rubles to organize a cheap dining room for the poor, was elected treasurer of the charitable committee, and supported the Penza theater and the Lermontov library.

One of his sons, Vsevolod Emilevich, became an outstanding reformer of domestic theater. At baptism, he received the names Karl-Theodor-Kazimir, which he changed to Vsevolod in 1895 upon converting to Orthodoxy.

In the 60s and 70s, only metal mechanisms under the floor and a huge amount of broken bottle glass in the yard reminded of the former factory. Five meters from the Meyerhold house, until the mid-70s, there was a medical sobering-up station, which seems to have finally erased the memory of 'Uglevka', one of the best vodkas in Russia.