ndia consumes 48% of the world’s whisky. It is the fastest-growing market and the largest producer of the spirit. But what exactly are we making and drinking?
Whisky is decidedly the spirit of choice in India—we consume almost half the whisky produced worldwide. From the cheapest Indian-made foreign liquor (IMFL) variant—whisky makes for almost 90% of IMFL—to limited-edition single-malt Scotch, people are drinking more whisky today than ever, spending anywhere between Rs50 per 25ml peg for a McDowell’s at a Paharganj bar in Delhi to Rs1,500 for a small Johnnie Walker Blue Label at a five-star hotel. While gin is going through something of a resurgence, it is still whisky that racks up the numbers, with a more-than-healthy lead over every other alcoholic beverage.
Whisky, in the classical understanding, is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. These grains—barley, maize, wheat, rye, etc.—are malted and fermented, and can be used in various combinations or on their own to make whisky.
Ground malted barley is soaked in warm water to extract sugars. The sweet liquor called wort is drained and transferred to fermentation tanks. Yeast is added to this to break down the sugars to alcohol. The fermentation results in a liquid called wash, which is then distilled. Most companies distil the liquid twice but sometimes it is distilled thrice. The distilled whisky is then stored in wooden barrels for maturation.
In India, most of the whisky is made from molasses—the dark, viscous by-product obtained by refining sugar from sugarcane. Fermented molasses are boiled to extract alcohol, which is distilled. The distillation results in a neutral spirit with 96% alcohol by volume, which forms the base of all IMFL. This is blended with a small amount of Scotch for flavour, and voila, we have Indian-made whisky.
“The major difference between the molasses-based and grains-based whisky is at the distillation stage,” says Nikam of Amrut, which makes both kinds of whiskies. “When we use the molasses base, we distil the alcohol till it becomes neutral and doesn’t have any characteristic flavour. For grains, we do an incomplete distillation so part of the flavour from the grains is there before it goes into barrels to mature.”
Amrut, which was established by Radhakrishna Jagdale in 1948, produces spirits from vodka to gin, including Amrut single malt whisky, which is exported to more than 25 countries.
According to Nikam, Amrut produces about 6 million nine-litre cases of liquor annually, 35,000 of which are single malt whisky. The company exports at least 60% of its single malts. As the company tries to expand beyond its key southern markets, Amrut is planning to increase its single malt production to 100,000 cases by 2022, half of which Nikam hopes will be consumed in India.
Globally, making whisky is a strictly regulated business. For example, in 2008, Europe passed a directive asserting that whisky was an alcoholic drink produced exclusively by the distillation of a mash made from malted cereals. This immediately excludes most “Indian whiskies” from the category.
Scotland took this a step further the next year, introducing the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 (SWR). The new regulations gave the precise definition of different kinds of whisky and the difference between a single grain and a single malt. The document has stringent guidelines on regional and geographical indications, production and maturation of Scotch. According to the SWR, Scotch can’t be made or matured outside Scotland. For a whisky to be called Scotch, it has to be made in Scotland, with set raw materials, and has to be aged within the country for three years or more.
Much of the whisky-producing world—from the US to Japan and Australia—has stuck to similar guidelines regarding the product and its manufacturing process. American bourbon whiskey, for example, must mature in new oak barrels, which are then used to age Scotch. In India, however, there are multiple regulations governing consumption age, on obtaining liquor licences and the tax structure—leading to arbitrary and exorbitant prices. But there are hardly any rules that benefit the end user, such as differentiating whisky from rum, or even country liquor for that matter.
The only stricture, according to a 2005 Bureau of Indian Standards publication, is that whisky should be made either from a neutral spirit that matches its standards, or a Grade I rectified spirit, or a mix of both. It is this laxity on the part of the Bureau of Indian Standards that allows for so many different spirits, many of which are artificially coloured, to be bottled and legally sold as whisky.
Yet last year, for the first time, the Union government standardized alcohol as a consumable product beyond tax purposes, and the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) came up with the draft Food Safety and Standards (Alcoholic Beverages Standards) Regulations, 2016, which defined various kinds of alcohol and their types.
According to the draft, “Whisky is an alcoholic beverage made from neutral grain spirit or rectified grain spirit, or neutral spirit or their mixture or is made by distilling the fermented extract of malted cereal grains such as corn, rye, barley; or molasses.”
At the same time, both rum and country liquor are defined by the FSSAI in pretty much the same way. Going by this definition, it’s hard to establish the difference between these three kinds of alcohol.
ost whisky made in India is aged briefly because the higher temperatures result in quicker evaporation of the spirit during the maturation stage, a phenomenon known as “the angels’ share”. The draft regulations require that whiskies in India, when labelled matured, “shall be matured for a period of not less than one year in wooden oak, wooden vats or barrels”. This means that much of the whisky that falls in the IMFL category is not aged at all.
Understandably, there has been retaliation, mostly in Europe, against the rise of India-made “cheap whiskies”. In its 2013 annual report, the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) urged European Union-wide action against the “extremely worrying” quantities of cheap Indian blends being imported into the EU.
“There is no compulsory definition of whisky in India, and the Indian voluntary standard does not require whisky to be distilled from cereals or to be matured,” according to a 2014 PTIreport which quoted the SWA report. “Very little Indian ‘whisky’ qualifies as whisky in the EU owing to the use of molasses or neutral alcohol, limited maturation (if any) and the use of flavourings. Such spirits are, of course, considerably cheaper to produce than genuine whisky.”
Whisky distillation came to India with the British in the 19th century. Edward Dyer, father of Reginald Dyer, the infamous British colonel who ordered the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, was the pioneer of whisky-making in India. Dyer senior set up a distillery in Kasauli in the 1820s. Kasauli, in the Himalayan highlands at 6,000ft above sea level, has climate similar to Scotland, with the added advantage that there was fresh springwater nearby. The distillery later moved to Solan.
Dyer brought equipment and copper stills from Scotland, some of which are still in use. The distillery’s Solan No.1 was the best-selling whisky in India for over a century but today, the only malt whisky from the Himalayas is struggling to find takers.
How molasses took over grains is actually quite an interesting story.
Across the world, people use agricultural surplus to make alcohol. Barley in Scotland; wheat, corn and rye in the US; rice in some Asian countries; and sugarcane in India. This is why molasses became prominent in Indian alcohol production.
In 1947, entrepreneur Vittal Mallya bought United Breweries, a group of five breweries in south India that made beer for British troops. At one time, United Spirits Ltd, the group’s alcoholic beverages company, was the largest spirit producer in India, with around 60% of the market share. Its brands included locally produced Bagpiper, Royal Challenge, McDowell’s No.1, and Antiquity, Jura and Dalmore single malt Scotch whiskies.
Diageo Plc., the world’s largest producer of spirits, now owns USL and the business is now called Diageo India.
“Diageo India is a market leader in both Scotch and IMFL segments and our brands are all available at distinctive price points in the overall whisky category,” says Thomas. “With each brand attracting a different set of consumers driven by varying taste preferences and affordability, we see sufficient interest across all the segments.”
But if you want to reach the masses, pricing your product at Rs300 per 750ml bottle, it simply isn’t possible to make it with grains, says Nikam. “At that price point, the product can only be made from neutral spirits,” he says.
Entry-level whisky is the most volatile space of the market. “Those people who were consuming country liquor will slowly move up to entry-level IMFL,” says Nikam.
“If you take the whiskies in the Rs300 price range and change the price by Rs5, you’d suddenly gain or lose 50% of your market share,” says drinks consultant Anand Virmani. “Frankly speaking, at that range, you can’t really make a good whisky.”
But consumers are upgrading as a result of increased exposure, better knowledge and more disposable income. Brands are taking notice. “Several brands in the Rs600-800 range have repackaged themselves,” says Virmani. “Many now have a limited edition kind of product too in the mix. It is an evolving market.”
IMFL has its place. “It is okay in the context in which it is being consumed,” says London-based whisky writer Joel Harrison. “Even though it isn’t the drink of the connoisseur, it is sweet and accessible, and can be easily consumed neat or mixed into a long drink.”
“There’s been significant improvement in the distillation technology and, therefore, even the alcohol made from molasses in most cases is of extremely good quality and does not make much of a quality difference,” says Sridhar Pongur, joint managing director at Goa-based John Distilleries Pvt. Ltd, which makes the Paul John brand of single malt whiskies. “However, since maturation is not normally done in India, there is definitely a difference in taste and flavour.”
