India Now Makes Some Of The Best Single Malts In The World

India now makes some of the best single malts in the world.

- Goutam Das

Whiskey maker John Distilleries’ corporate headquarters in Bengaluru has one of the more gorgeous views of the city’s central business district. In the corner of a 10th floor room, which has a view of the metro line that cuts across MG Road and East Parade Church, Heemanshu Ashar, Head of Marketing, takes this writer through quick tasting of the company’s single malts.

There is “Paul John Brilliance”, “Paul John Edited” and “Paul John Bold”. Brilliance is an unpeated whiskey while Bold is peated. Edited falls somewhere in between.

“The world is divided between peats (smokier whiskeys) and unpeats. There are smoke heads who will only take peated whiskey. Edited, meanwhile, doesn’t overpower. We call it the ‘kiss of peat,’ ” Ashar, who has grown a salt and pepper horseshoe moustache, explains.

Peat is a dead mass of vegetation formed and compressed thousands of years back and is mostly available in places such as Scotland where winters are good. Like coal, it can be a source of heat. When damp barley is dried over peat fire, the grain takes on a smokey aroma. The resulting whiskey, thereby, is smokey as well. “Our house style is vanilla, a bit of citrus, nuts,” Ashar continues. “The unpeated whiskeys are aged in our underground cellars. They are not temperature-controlled. What you get is the tropical-ness of the environment.”