Its principal owner, Yury Shefler, was born and raised in Russia. But accused by Moscow of stealing the Stolichnaya name from the Russian state in the chaotic 1990s, he risks arrest in Russia and has not been there for more than a decade.

The company that controls the brand, the Luxembourg-based SPI Group, is also owned by Mr. Shefler, who declined to be interviewed about the boycott of his best-known product. SPI has mounted a vigorous public campaign to show that it is not Russian, does not share the Kremlin’s take on homosexuality and is, as it asserted in a July statement, a “fervent supporter and friend” of those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

To that end, the company’s Latvia office has been badgering the bigger of Riga’s gay bars — there are only two — to start stocking Stolichnaya. Anatolijs Skangalis, the manager of the bar, Golden, said he did not sell the vodka, simply because he preferred other brands, like Russian Standard. It has nothing to do with the American-led boycott, he says, which he ridiculed as a “dirty brand war” that has nothing to do with gay rights.

Image All Stolichnaya sold in the United States is made in Riga. Credit... The New York Times

Stolichnaya, said Val Mendeleev, SPI Group’s Russian-born chief executive, is no more a proxy for the Russian state than Google, whose co-founder Sergey Brin was born in Moscow. “People say Stoli is owned by a rich Russian, but Sergey Brin is an even richer Russian,” Mr. Mendeleev said.

SPI Group, he said, is “not trying to hide” its Russian roots — Stolichnaya’s formula, basic ingredients and name, which means capital, all come from Russia — but the company wants to make clear that it is anything but an ally of the Kremlin and that “you will not hurt Russia by dumping Stoli.”

In any event, the Riga Stolichnaya factory says its vodka business, 60 percent of which is in the United States, has not yet been hurt by the boycott, despite reports that a number of bars from New York to San Francisco have started taking the drink off their shelves. It can take several weeks for a collapse of sales to work its way into the production end.