DRAM ROLL!

Appreciation clubs and homegrown malts are remaking India's whisky scene

- NAVIN J. ANTONY

Many years ago, when Vijay Mallya was still the “King of Good Times”, his United Spirits embarked on a whisky experiment. Rice from Punjab was dispatched to a distillery in Goa, where the grains were polished, steamed and mashed into unsavoury sludge. Yeast and mould were added, and the sludge was thinned out, poured into casks and put away to ferment.

And then trouble brewed. Mallya went broke and was forced to sell off United Spirits to the British giant Diageo. By the time the new management discovered the rice-alcohol casks, three years had passed.

Diageo owned such labels as Johnnie Walker and Buchanan’s, so it had no need for a Goan craft whisky. But it stuck with the experiment. The alcohol was allowed to mature in ex-bourbon casks (discarded barrels which were used to mature American bourbon, a highly sought-after commodity in the whisky industry), and its master blender flavoured and ‘finished’ it. The spirit was then distilled into 2,000 bottles and labelled the Epitome Reserve—“India’s first artisanal, small-batch, craft whisky”. The bottles flew off the shelves in no time.

The year was 2021—a special one for Indian whisky. It was the same year that Mithuna by Paul John (from the Goa-based Paul John Distilleries) was rated as the world’s third finest whisky by Jim Murray, the formidable critic who publishes the annual Whisky Bible. Murray said Mithuna was “the feeling after you have just made love”.