Meet the new crop of India’s single malt whisky makers

South Seas Distilleries, set up by the Chinoys in 1984, is among the country’s largest privately owned malt spirit suppliers.

Hormazdyaar Chinoy’s family has been making alcohol for generations. His forefathers brewed toddy and distilled liquor from exotic fruits and flowers before setting up distilleries in the 1920s in Aswa, in Dahanu, Akkalkot, near Solapur, and Jawahar, near Palghar, on the invitation of the then rulers of the respective principalities. They were among the first to obtain a distillery licence after Prohibition was lifted in Maharashtra in 1972. South Seas Distilleries, set up by the Chinoys in 1984, is among the country’s largest privately owned malt spirit suppliers. They have also been contracted to make single malt whiskies for multinational liquor giants. Late last year, with the launch of Crazy Cock, Hormazdyaar’s father Viraf achieved a cherished ambition: launching his single malt brand.

“The ‘Cock’ in the name is inspired by the Year of the Rooster in which it was conceived (2017); the ‘Crazy’ is an ode to our father who set up one of India’s largest maturation warehouses way back in 2007. He’s been waiting for this moment,” says Hormazdyaar. The whisky is available in two expressions, Rare ( ₹8,900) and Dhua ( ₹12,500); the former is matured in ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks, while the latter is mildly peated.

The Chinoys couldn’t have chosen a more opportune time to launch their own single malt. 2023, after all, was a year of several distinctions for whisky in India and especially the single malt category. Against the backdrop of Indians becoming the world’s largest consumers of scotch, sales of homegrown single malts from Amrut Distilleries, Paul John, and Piccadily Distilleries outstripped offerings from multinationals. The IWSR Drinks Market Analysis projects the consumption of single malt to grow 13% a year against scotch’s 8% until 2027. And, in a sign of the category’s potential, Pernod Ricard became the second multinational after Diageo India to launch its own made-in-India single malt.

Kartik Mohindra says Pernod Ricard India worked on the Longitude 77 for about six years. “Longitude 77 is at the top of the whisky tree – in a category that is really exciting. It proves that spirits of local provenance can hold their own against the world’s best,” says Mohindra, who is chief marketing officer at Pernod Ricard India.

At about the same time as Crazy Cock and Longitude 77 were being conceived, Shrikant Hajare was gently persuading his in-laws to consider making their own single malts. Hajare, a former high ranking McDowell and Seagram executive, is married into the Shirgaokar family, which owns the eponymous, highly diversified group. Ugar Sugar Works, the group’s flagship company, which is based in Ugar-Khurd, near Belgavi, is the largest ‘single location’ manufacturer of ethanol in Asia and among the leading producers of sugar in India.

“We’ve been distilling a range of liquor products since 1962 and we had a fair bit of matured malts in our warehouses that we used for blending. They were exceedingly good and I said, these deserve to be single malts,” says Hajare. Over the last year or so, Hajare has soft-launched his single malts, the Ugar 4-YO and 7-YO, in Karnataka and Goa, and plans to introduce them in other states, including Maharashtra, this year. Both the expressions are bottled at 42.8% ABV, and are priced at ₹2900 and ₹4950 in Goa. Hajare is looking to sell about 6,000 cases of his malts annually. “The Indian consumers’ tastes have evolved. He might drink a very good scotch, but at the same time, there is space in his bar for well-made Indian single malts. There is an element of pride at play here,” he says.

The likes of Chinoy and Hajare echo the concerns of their more established counterparts – as well as whisky experts – regarding the rapid growth of the category and hope that the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s (FSSAI) regulation defining Indian Single Malt whisky will be followed by more stringent rules regarding the production and classification of the whiskies.

The FSSAI’s standards require single malt whisky to be distilled from fermented mash using malted barley exclusively and distilled in pot stills within a single distillery. It will come into effect this March. “The weather in India is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to making whisky,” says Chinoy. “You’ve got to have know-how and experience, you can’t cut corners. We need more stringent rules and more proactive associations so that we don’t undo what has been built over the last decade or so,” says Chinoy.

Whisky consultant Krishna Nukala adds that as the category grows, no distillery should be allowed to be economical with the truth. “The provenance of the whisky should be clearly stated on the bottle. Ideally, whisky makers should inform consumers if they are working with their own matured stock or whether it has been sourced from another distillery. But that might be too big an ask. So, they should mention the nature of the spirit — whether it is ex-grain or malted, or their proportion,” says Nukala.

About 3,000 kilometres away, in the village of KhatKhati, in Karbi Anglong, Assam, Vicky Chand is closely watching his double barrel whisky come into being. Chand heads Radiant Manufacturers, a leading distillery in the Northeast, and has employed the services of master distiller John McDougall, who has worked with the likes of Balvenie, Laphroaig, and Springbank, to oversee the production of his future launches.

His warehouse in KhatKhati contains malt spirit that has been sourced from Jammu’s Dewans Modern Breweries and has been matured in ex-bourbon casks and in barrels that once held Dark Knight, a corn whiskey he introduced in 2019 in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Chand expects to launch the single malt “as early as next year”. “Our oldest single malt is 7-YO and youngest about two – and we could start with a limited edition release of our whisky,” says Chand. A triple malt whisky, with “whisky sourced from distilleries across India”, is also being planned. And he isn’t keen on being a, sort of, Irish whiskey bonder for long. The big idea, he says, is to “eventually set up up Radiant Manufacturers’s pot still and make our own Indian single malt whisky.”

(The writer works on content strategy at Haymarket SAC)

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