Amrut Two Indies White Rum (India) – Review

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Dec 202024
 

Once again we are visiting India, to look at a rum made by the world-famous whisky producer, Amrut Distillers. The story of this remarkable company has been told already so I won’t rehash it here — but it behooves us to note that for all the ballyhoo about its whiskies (for which it is mostly and justly famed), Amrut has been making rums for far longer, dating back to its initial  establishment in 1948. Also, in a departure from Mohan Meakin (of Old Monk fame), Amrut did not descend from a British-run company from colonial times, but was and remains entirely home grown.

In years past I have looked at two rums from the company – the Old Port Deluxe, and the Two Indies rums; however, this was many years ago, and as I lurch obliviously into doddering and drooling dotage, my memory fails sometimes, so I’ll revisit those — or their current iterations — soon.  Today, however, we’ll fill a small gap in the minimal company rum stable, and review the Two Indies White, which I found at the 2024 Paris Whisky Live — this edition was issued in 2023 —  displayed with a complete lack of fanfare off to the side of more famous whiskies, on the ground floor booth of the company.

“Two Indies” is a moniker given to show off the rum’s antecedents from distillate produced both in the India (the east Indies), and the Caribbean (the west). The white rum is made somewhat at right angles from the two Two Indies variants, original and Dark, which both have at least three Caribbean components (Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana) to add to the Indian part. This one has some Jamaican rum – the distillery is never mentioned – added to a blend of Indian made sugarcane juice rum and jaggery-based rum. 

The source of the juice is the Bangalore facility where the company HQ is also located, from cane grown in their backyard, and the jaggery1 is sourced from India’s sugar city of Mandya, SW of Bangalore. All three parts are pot still distillates, which, after being made, are blended and aged for a short eight-months-to-one-year period in ex-bourbon casks. And, as is usual for India, it’s released at 42.8%, which is the Imperial 75 proof from colonial times that was never abandoned.

Although I’m sure the intentions were well meant, the rum noses as thin and weak. Initially one can sense candy floss and marshmallows, plus some light white fruits (pears, watermelon, papaya), some sweet coconut water, leavened with bananas, caramel, and some lemon zest. Behind all that are wisps of vanilla, cinnamon and cardamom, which one has to really strain to notice at all. One wonders where the Jamaicans are hiding, because weren’t they there to provide some oomph and kick and attitude?  Doesn’t feel like that at all. And the distinctive aggro of a pot still product is decidedly muted (if not absent altogether), which is disappointing, to say the least.

This general sense of puling wimpiness pervades the palate as well. The website and promo materials talk about a “herbaceous” and “vegetal” profile, which I ignore, because it certainly doesn’t taste that way. Oh, we have some easygoing pears and guavas, an intriguing series of notes that channel fresh Danish cookies and pastries, and a light set of spices, but the crisp grassy notes of a true agricole are not in evidence. On the contrary, it’s underpowered and the profile suffers for that; this thing needs to be stronger, otherwise the whole thing, including the finish, is like unsatisfying coitus — brief, barely noticeable as an experience, and by the time you get a head of steam going, it’s over. There are some light fruity notes and a bit of spearmint gum as consolation for disappointed participants – I guess that’s something.

Granted the rum is relatively cheap and made for the cocktail and backbar circuit (it costs about €30), so as an interested reviewer I guess I’d buy it, try it … and then trade it or sample it off. The low strength and general youth and lacklustre profile are not to the rum’s advantage, and whatever the Jamaican portion of the blend is — on the website they stated it was added to “infuse the blend with its powerful, fruity esters” – it’s too little to put an exclamation point to the rum’s taste. It tries to take the best of three different rum styles, and succeeds at none of them, which suggests to me that perhaps it would be better to try and keep the rum as a pure Indian expression rather than try and jazz it up as some kind of exotic blend. Keep this rum on the bar as a mixer if you want, but me, I’d keep it there for something to juice up a cocktail, nothing more.

(#1102)(75/100) ⭐⭐½

Other notes

Amrut Distilleries

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Oct 262022
 

There are many Indian spirits combines on the subcontinent which make rum — Radico Khaitan, Mohan Meakin and United Spirits, are some examples — not all of which are well known by rum folks elsewhere because of their predilection for selling domestically, or only in Asia. Still others concentrate on beer, whisky or various other industrial manufacturing enterprises, and the rum component of their sales is so minor that it is not widely exported. And yet rum is one of the oldest distilled spirits made in India, and it is this which founded the fortunes of Amrut Distilleries way before they started finding global fame as purveyors of that obscure Scottish drink in the 2010s.

What became Amrut Distilleries – the name means “nectar of the gods” in Sanskrit2 – was established in 1939 in the south-central-Indian city of Bangalore as Associated Drugs Co. Ltd, and then in 1947 as Amrut Laboratories — the founder, JN Radhakrishna Rao Jagdale, was a chemist — with an investment of a few hundred thousand rupees. At the time its stated purpose was over the counter drugs and pharmaceuticals (particularly cough syrup) but with the gaining of independence, opportunities for local Indians expanded in concert with the relaxation of licensing laws. This allowed a distillery licence to become easier to acquire, so Mr. Jagdale promptly got one, and Amrut Distilleries was registered in 1948 (the pharmaceutical division was retained).  

If one were to read the various online newspapers, magazines and hagiographies of Amrut, one could be forgiven for concluding that it jumped fully formed out of Zeus’s brow in the 1980s when they first began making malted whiskey, leading to the global successes and acclaim of their single malts in the 2010s.  However, like most Indian producers of spirits, Amrut had a history before that, and it is frustrating in the extreme to find almost nothing written about the company that would give a more detailed picture of what it did between 1950 and 1982. 

(c) Amrut Distilleries

Be that as it may, Amrut by 1949 had already begun making a blended brandy called “Silver Cup” and debuted in the state of Karnataka (of which Bangalore is the capital and largest city) – vinyards were spreading around Bangalore at that time, so there was a ready supply of grapes (though there was, as was common at the time, a fair bit of adulteration going on…see next paragraph). This must have sold well enough to keep the business afloat, but strangely enough, even with the example of Dyer Meakin’s Solan No.1 whiskey, Amrut did not immediately branch out into whiskies, but for several years mostly sold brandies and rums. Some attention was obviously being paid, however, since by 1962 the company had a contract with the army, (probably following on the example set by Dyer Meakin’s very successful Old Monk rum from 1954) — and they supplied brandy, Amrut XXX rum and Prestige XXX whiskey to the armed forces’ 3000 or so canteens. To this day, sales to the armed forces remain a significant proportion of the companies’ revenues.

It should be pointed out that during these decades, local spirits – “Indian Made Indian Liquors” or IMIL, and locally manufactured foreign ones “Indian Made Foreign Liquor” or IMFL – catered primarily to the low-end mass-market of India. Brandies were from local grapes, rums from local molasses, and gins and whiskies were often from distillate that also came from molasses — in the latter case, with 10%-15% of malted whisky thrown in to make the taste more “genuine”. In many cases, neutral alcohol was mixed with some of the real spirit or additives to give the impression of genuine-ness, and then watered down to below the maximum allowable strength (45% or so).

This was more than just rank pecuniary opportunism, mind (although there was plenty of that too): part of the reason for this procedure in whiskies was that in a country plagued by food shortages and even famines, it was problematic to use grain for the manufacture of alcohol. And alcohol itself was a touchy moral subject when considered with poverty and alcohol’s ambivalent reputation (some states do not allow alcohol to be sold on payday, as an interesting aside). The adulteration and dodgy manufacturing might have allowed costs to be kept miniscule and prices low for local consumers, but was the major reason no Indian whisky was permitted to call itself Scotch or Scots whisky in the EEC and EU for a very long time, in spite of their seeming pedigree and occasional names deriving from Scots culture.

With these facts in mind it would seem logical (in the absence of better information to the contrary) to assume that Amrut essentially played a long and slow game of gradual expansion. They started with brandy, moved into rum and then did a blended whisky which was based at least partly on molasses distillate, as all distillers were doing at the time. Much of the research available suggests that the Bangalore facility was and has remained the main operational centre and initially comprised of a liquor blending and bottling unit, with a distillery added at some later point in the 1950s.

By 1972 they were distilling their own brandy so clearly they had moved away from just blending, and gradually, if slowly, expanding beyond the borders of Karnataka.  In that same year, the 19-year-old Neelakanta Rao Jagdale joined the company (the exact position he was given is unclear, though most sources agree he was helping his father “run” the company).  This was fortuitous timing, as four years later in 1976, Radhakrishna Rao Jagdale, the founder of the company, died, and Neelakanta stepped up to become Chairman and Managing Director. The company forged on under Neelakanta’s leadership, however, and it could be argued that his achievements and the direction he gave Amrut in the 1980s made it a seminal decade in the company’s early history.

In 1984, a Government monopoly over spirits was instituted in the southwestern state of Kerala via the Kerala State Beverages Corporation, and Amrut was licensed to sell to them, thereby acquiring a large market share in that state; they similarly expanded into other states in this decade, and gained loyal customers in states like Pondicherry, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi in addition to its own state of Karnataka. This was accompanied in 1987 by an expansion and refurbishment of the Bangalore distillery, with additional distillation equipment brought in to increase capacity as restrictions on imports were eased. 

Amrut also broke new ground in taking aim at a more premium segment of the Indian spirits industry, when the deregulatory wave of Thatcherite and Reaganite economics started to sweep around the world. In 1982 they began to experiment with making whisky, not just as an inferior and cheaply made mix of real and neutral and molasses spirit, but from grains. This did not stop the MaQintosh whisky from being made as an initially cheap blend, though perhaps it was more notable for casually appropriating two evocative terms – the Mac computer and a Scottish name –  than any intrinsic quality of its own. It was followed in 1986 by the Prestige Blended Malt Whisky, which was also blended with flavourings while at the same time reducing the quantity of molasses spirit and focusing much more on barley. Yet all the while the company was starting to work towards making a true Single Malt. 

By the mid 1990s they had developed whisky that was all from Indian grain and aged to the standard required by international regulations, and Jagdale felt it was of a quality that matched Scottish 12 year old whiskies. The problem was, although they had burgeoning stocks, enough to sell, could they make enough of it to go on and scale up, and could they sell it outside of India? Other companies were also making malted whisky with malted barley imported from abroad (because of grain shortages in India), and this restricted Amrut’s plans…until the early 2000s.

(c) Amrut Distilleries

Several events intersected at that point.  For one, India became self sufficient in grain for the first time and so more was available for alcohol manufacture. Secondly, industrial technology infrastructure got a boost with the ethanol plants built by Praj Industries in the late 1990s so grain alcohol became seen as an economically viable substitute for molasses-based rectified spirit, or extra neutral alcohol. As deregulation gathered steam and a new and more sophisticated (and affluent) urban middle class emerged in India, the moral taboos and restrictions on grain based spirits began to recede.  And lastly, there was the impetus and competition given to local spirits companies and their IMFL by the entrance to the Indian market of foreign liquor multinationals who had the benefit of larger supplies and that air of long-established authenticity which Indian made liquors did not have.

The entry of global spirits conglomerates was crucial because it invaded the premium section of the market, the same one local companies like Amrut were aiming to colonise themselves. Amrut knew that they could either go the route of building strong, original, authentic brands that could compete in the top end — and globally — or be relegated to the mass market, where they would be tied to a multitude of (complex, bureaucratic and often corrupt) local state government agencies and razor thin margins. Vijay Mallya’s United Spirits group solved this issue by acquiring foreign alcohol businesses with well known brand portfolios, saving them the trouble of building their own, but Amrut went in the opposite direction: they would compete directly and build their own brands, reasoning that there would be a knock-on effect for all their other products.

The story has been told so many times that it has been raised to the status of company myth. In 2002 Neelakanta’s son Rakshit was studying for an MBA in Newcastle-on-Tyne in northern England and his father gave him the task of exploring the potential of Amrut’s single malt whisky. Rakshit, with his fellow MBA classmate and friend Ashok Chokalingam, did a series of blind tastings in restaurants and bars, starting with a neighbourhood Indian establishment and eschewing jaded connoisseurs’ opinions in favour of the regular whisky drinkers who would consume the same preferred drink consistently. The results were mostly positive and so he expanded into Scotland and traditional pubs, where again there was approval. This in turn allowed Rakshit to build up a network of suppliers and distributors, and in 2004 — after two years of coming up to scratch on the EU’s packaging standards — the Amrut Single Malt whisky debuted in Britain (in the Cafe India in Glasgow, for trivia-enthusiasts), with expansion to Europe in 2005 (in an odd twist, Amrut’s single malts only became available in India in 2010). 

The logic of introducing an Indian single malt in Britain and the EU was sound: Neelakanta knew that a foreign stamp of approval would raise awareness and sales in India in a way that sidestepped and shortcut the much longer process of winning over local customers, had the whisky first been released domestically (this is a cultural block that afflicts many home-grown spirits, not just whisky and not just in India). That said, initial sales, while decent, were modest, climbing from 2000 cases at first, to 5000 cases in 2008. The tipping point came in 2010 when Jim Murray named the Amrut Fusion released the previous year as the third best whisky in the world. After over a decade of experimentation, marketing, slogging and anonymous legwork, Amrut became an overnight success, if not an outright sensation and, as Neelakanta had predicted, local sales exploded. By 2019 global sales of malt whisky were close to 70,000 cases, in dozens of countries (and that number has surely increased).

Amrut built on this success by releasing other whiskies in the years that followed, like the “Two Continents” which won India’s Whisky of the Year award in 2012. It also made the decision to polish up its semi-premium products, like the 2012 release of MaQintosh Silver Limited Edition blended malt whisky, which uses some of the same malt spirits that go into Amrut Fusion. At the same time, in a long overdue move, they upgraded their cheap rum in launching the Old Port Deluxe in 2009 (it was made from Indian molasses), and the Two Indies Rum several years later in 2013 (made from jaggery distillate and a blend of West Indian rums) – both are export-oriented, and aim to be more upscale products, though reactions and reviews in the rum world have been mostly middle of the road, primarily due to the lack of provided information on either, and the gradual fall from favour of blended and adulterated rums. To round out the decade, a new distillery was built at the same site as the existing distillery in Bengaluru, and commissioned in 2018, which increased capacity to a million litres annually.

In 2019, to the shock and sorrow of many, Neelakanta Rao Jagdale passed away, two weeks before the company won the World Whisky Producer of the Year at the san Francisco Bartender’s Whisky Awards, going up against giants like Diageo and Pernod Ricard. In a move somewhat reminiscent of Google, the third generation — Rakshit Jagdale and his brother-in-law Vikram Nigam — took over, and shared Managing Director duties of Amrut Distilleries, a situation that persists to this day.

(c) Amrut Distilleries. Left to right: Vikram Nigam, Neelakanta Jagdale, and Rakshit Jagdale

There has been no large shakeups or news of note from Amrut since then, certainly not in the rumisphere, especially since COVID paused the world and it is only now getting back on its feet. Amrut Distilleries continues and for better or worse has tied their alcoholic future to three major prongs: local sales of semi-premium and cut-rate mass market products within India, reputation-making luxury whiskies globally, and the poor stepchild, rum, making up the remainder alongside other products like gins, brandies and vodkas (the Jagdale Group has many other commercial interests but I focus on the liquor segment here). 

Old Monk rum might have been the bigger seller and the more famous name, and McDowell’s probably outsells it locally, but it was Amrut Distilleries which put Indian liquors on the world stage and gave them some respectability. It worked for whiskies, and perhaps now it is time for the rums as well, especially since the 2022 selection of their pot still jaggery rum for inclusion in the Habitation Velier range. There were plans to release a jaggery-based single-cask rum in August of 2022, Rakshit Jagdale said in a interview in June of that year…but I’ve seen nothing of that in the market so far, aside from a similar promise made in 2017, and the HV edition.

But the time may have come for Amrut to add to the success of the whisky segment and spend some time upgrading the rum portfolio: it should be expanded, premiumised, and allowed to take its place alongside the whiskies at last. Too long Indian rum has taken the low road and suffered for that by being ignored by serious enthusiasts in the larger drinking world, seen as less, and sold too often only to the diaspora. If old Neelakanta’s ambition, vision and risk-taking character have passed to the next generation, and they see the developments of the quality rum portfolios of so many new brands, then perhaps before too many years go by, we will see some seriously aged, unadded-to, unadulterated, pot-still, full-proof Indian rums of real quality come from Amrut. And it would be about damned time.

Rums

Main Timeline

  • 1947 Establishment of Amrut Labs by a chemist, Radhakrishna Rao Jagdale
  • 1948 Establishment of Amrut Distilleries
  • 1949 Silver Cup Brandy introduced at state level in Karnataka
  • 1962 Amrut XXX rum and Prestige XXX whisky sold to Indian Army
  • 1972 Neelakanta Rao Jagdale (b.1953) joins his father in running Amrut
  • 1976 JN Radhakrishna Rao Jagdale dies
  • 1982 Malt whiskey begins to be made with grain; MaQintosh blended whiskey introduced
  • 1986 Prestige Blended Malt Whisky begins to be sold to Canteen Stores Department
  • 1987 New (and now primary) distillery built on a 4-hectare site in Kambipura, about 20 km from Bangalore
  • 2002 Rakshit Jagdale begins testing customer appreciation in Newcastle-on-Tyne
  • 2004 Amrut Indian Single Malt debuts in Cafe India in Glasgow
  • 2005 Jim Murray gives Amrut Single Malt 82/100 points
  • 2009 Fusion launches in UK; Old Port Deluxe rum is introduced
  • 2010 Fusion launches in India
  • 2010 Jim Murray rates Fusion as 3rd best in the world with 96.5 points.
  • 2012 Amrut Two Continents rated Indian Whisky of the Year
  • 2013 Fusion introduced in Mumbai; Amrut Two Indies Rum launches
  • 2018 New distillery commissioned at Bangalore site: capacity increases to 1 million litres annually
  • 2019 Neelakanta Rao Jagdale dies
  • 2019 Amrut wins World Whisky Producer of the Year at Bartender’s Whisky Awards
  • 2022 Amrut selected for Habitation Velier bottling
  • 2023 Amrut Two Indies White introduced

General Sources

Early years

Whisky

Current details

Other Notes

Most newspaper and blog articles on the company focus on whisky, including technical details, sourcing of barley, the development of single malts and so on. While not downplaying this part of the company’s rich history, I have taken rum as my primary focus and so not lengthened the article needlessly with a deep dive into that aspect of Amrut’s operations. Interested readers can follow the sources of they wish to know more about it.

 

Habitation Velier Amrut 2015 7 YO “Jaggery” Indian Rum – Review

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Oct 052022
 

Even after the decade I’ve spent writing about Velier’s rums, the company still manages to pull a rabbit out of its hat and surprise me when I least expect it, and the new Habitation Velier Amrut rum from India is this year’s contender for the rum I most wanted to try, the moment I saw Steve Magarry’s post about it on FB in September of 2022 (it popped up at Paris’s WhiskyLive a week later). Because, consider what a singular rum this is, and how many fascinating strands of the rum world it pulls together:  

It’s a pot still rum, from the HV line (which as you know, I consider a hugely important one) and an intersection with La Maison du Whisky’s “Antipodes” line of spirits – and therefore suggests, as the Indian Ocean series also did, that there is a move by independent bottlers to go further afield to new and unexplored territory in sourcing their barrels3.

In that vein, then, it’s also the only independent bottling of a rum from India itself that has crossed my path since Alt-Enderle’s “India” rum from Germany, back in 2014 (and that one was questionable). And it’s also not made by some no-name, just-opened small distillery with a single small pot still run by a pair of young enthusiastic backpacking European exiles, but a major whisky making house (one that my buddy in Calgary, Curt Robinson, just loves) which makes a popular rum line of its own. 

Thirdly, and perhaps as important, it highlights an emergent (and still relatively small) trend towards using other sources of sugar cane and its derivatives to make rum – in this case it’s not juice, not molasses, not vesou or ‘honey’, but the unrefined, nutrient-rich sugar known as jaggery.  We have met it before from India and always from the same company that makes this rum: Amrut (though I sometimes suspect Old Monk from Mohan Meakin may also use it). And yet even to say jaggery is only used (or made) in India is incorrect, because unrefined sugar of this kind is made around the world. In the Philippine Cordilleras it is inti, in Malaysia it is known as gula melaka and Thailand as namtan tanode; it’s used in making kokuto shochu in Japan and charandas in Mexico (where it called panela), and in both these latter cases the resultant is, while recognizably a rum, also different and completely fascinating. 

Years ago I heard stories about Luca wandering around India when the Indian Ocean series was being assembled in 2018, and there were always rumours that the series was never meant to be just two bottlings: but he never found the proper rums from major distilleries in India that he felt warranted inclusion – they were not pot still, not interesting enough, had additions, were too young, or whatever.  Yet clearly he had identified something at that stage and it was simply not ready then, because the Bangalore-based distillery of Amrut gave him a single barrel of pure jaggery-based rum to bottle in 2022, and this is it. Pot still, 62.8%, 7 years old, ex-bourbon barrel aged, aged in India. And it’s really quite something.

If aroma had a colour, I’d call this “gold”. It smells like a warm tropical evening with the dappled and fading light breaking through the trees in orange and yellow-brown. It’s a high ABV rum, sure, yet all one gets on that nose is ease and relaxation, molasses, vanilla, coconut shavings, coffee grounds, some freshly sawn wood and the firmness of an anvil wrapped in a feather blanket. There are also some fruits hovering around the edges of awareness – a mix of oranges, sugar cane, fleshy stoned fruit (very ripe) and spices like cumin, cinnamon and thyme held way way back, with just enough making it through to tease. It’s one of those rums that invites sustained nosing.

The taste presents more crisply, with somewhat more force, which I argue is exactly the way it should be. Like other Indian rums I recall, it shows off honey, maple syrup, licorice for the sweet stuff, then balances that with the freshness and tartness of pineapple, strawberries, ripe peaches and apricots a fat ripe yellow mango bursting with juice, and an intriguing line of spices (cumin and cinnamon), minerals and light ashiness that together are just different enough to excite, while not so strong as to derail the experience. Attention should also be drawn to a really nice and long finish, which has the sweet and salt of a caramel-laden latte, but is mostly musky and fruity, with some cinnamon, brine, light florals and brown sugar. 

LMDW Catalogue Entry (c) LMDW (click to expand)

A rum like this has to navigate a fine line, since it is not made for indigenous consumers or drinkers from the diaspora — like Amrut’s Two Indies or Old Port Deluxe (or the Old Monk itself, for that matter) — in a region where additives and spicing up do not attract quite the same opprobrium as they do elsewhere. It’s aimed at a western audience which is likely to be unfamiliar with such products and has its own criteria, and so an unadded-to spirit which is clearly a rum is a must…yet at the same time it must also present its own artisanal nature and country’s distilling ethos to show its differences from western-hemisphere rums. It can’t be just another Caribbean rum-wannabe, but its own product, made its own way, hewing to its makers’ ideals and own local tastes.

By that standard, all I can say is it succeeded swimmingly.  I thought it was an amazing, new, fresh and all-round tasty rum, one that was familiar enough to enjoy, strange enough to enthral, flavourful enough to remember (and then some). Taste, complexity, balance, assembly, they were all quite top notch. It was a rum I wish I could have had more of right there. Habitation Velier’s Amrut may not point the way to a third major source of rum raw materials, and never be more than a niche market product as it is – rum folks are as clannish as the Scots when clinging to their favourites – yet I think we may be witnessing another front being opened in the ever widening battle to make rums more interesting, more global, more unique — and, at end, perhaps even more respected. At the very least, even if none of those things appeal or interest you, try the rum itself, just for itself, as it is.  It’s really damned fine.

(#941)(88/100) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

  • The photograph from the catalogue which has been circulating on social media shows 65% ABV and a 285-bottle outturn.  This was an early facsimile issued for inclusion in the catalogue, printed prior to the final bottling The actual strength as issued is 62.8% and there is only one bottling, not two. Outturn is 130 bottles (per the label). I was sampling from Bottle #1. What happened to the other 155 bottles they had estimated when doing the publicity photo is unknown
  • Completely made, aged and bottled in India. The humourist in me wants to ask, does this qualify as continental or tropical ageing?
  • The Velier webpage has not yet been updated for this rum; when it is, you can find it here.

Amrut Two Indies Rum – Review

 3 Responses »
Apr 062017
 

#354

Amrut, that Bangalore company which makes the Old Port rum I tried many years ago, as well as whiskies many swoon over, is no stranger to making rums, but their marketing effort is primarily aimed at the subcontinent itself, and perhaps other parts of Asia (maybe they’re chasing Old Monk, which was once the #1 rum in India).  There’s not much of a range (five rums in all), and I rarely saw any of them in Canada – this one was bought in Europe.  Given that this particular rum is a blend of – get this! – Jamaican, Bajan, Guyanese and Indian pot-still rum, one can perhaps be forgiven for asking whether they’re going in the direction of Ocean’s Atlantic Rum; and as far as I was concerned that one suffered from overreach.  But at least we know where the “Two Indies” moniker derives, if nothing else.

It’s also worth commenting on one thing: the Indian component of the rum is supposedly a pot still originating distillate based on jaggery, which is a natural sweetener made from sugar cane…whose by-product is molasses so one wonders why not just go there and have done, but never mind.  The issues (not problems) we have are two fold: firstly, jaggery is actually made from either sugar cane or the date palm, so I’m unsure of which variation is in use here (since sugar cane jaggery is cheaper, I’m putting my money there); secondly, assuming the jaggery is from cane, it is in effect a reduced version of sugar cane juice – a syrup – what we in the West Indies and parts of South America sometimes refer to as “honey”. So in effect there’s nothing particularly special about the matter except that its source product is made in Asia and widely known there.  And, of course, the marketing, since it suggests a divergence and distinction from more familiar terms.

Anyway, all this preamble leads inevitably to the question of whether that basic ingredient lends a difference to the profile, the way for example a “maple syrup rum” would (and yes, there is such an abomination). I don’t really think so – the difference in taste and smell I noted seemed to be more a product of the entire geographical environment, the way a Bundie is linked to Australia, and Dzama is Madagascar and Ryoma is Japanese.  I’m not saying I could necessarily taste it blind and know it was either from India in general or Amrut in particular – but there were differences from more traditional Caribbean or Latin American rums with which we have greater experience

Consider first how it smelled.  The nose began by presenting a sort of lush fruitiness that spilled over into over-ripe, almost spoiled mangoes, persimmons and sweet tropical fruit and kiwi, something also akin to those cloying yellow-orange cashews the snacking nuts are made from (not those with the stones inside).  In the background there lurked caramel and vanilla, some cloying sweet and also breakfast spices (cloves and maybe nutmeg mostly, though very light) just as the Old Monk had; and overall, the aromas were heavy and (paradoxically enough) not all that easy to pick out – perhaps that was because of the inoffensive 42.8% ABV it was bottled at.

I liked the taste a lot better, though that queer heaviness persisted through what ended up as a much clearer rum than I had expected.  So, bananas, more of the mangoes and cashews, honey, papayas, and the spices.  Adding some water released some chocolate and coffee, nutmeg, more vanilla and caramel, maybe some light molasses, some licorice, a nice twist of citrus rind, which I liked – it provided an edge that was sorely needed.  Finish was soft and quick, reasonably clean and warm, but was mostly the spices and caramel than anything else.

Reading around doing the usual research (and there is really not very much to go on so I have an outstanding email and a FB message sent out to them) suggests there are no artificial flavours included: but I dunno, that profile is quite different, and the breakfast spices are evident, so I gotta wonder about that; and the overall mouthfeel does suggest some sugar added (no proof on my side, though).  This doesn’t sink the drink, but it does make for an unusual  experience.  You’re not getting any Jamaican funk, Guyanese wooden stills or easier Bajans, nor any of that off-the-wall madness of an unaged white popskull.  It is simply what it is, in its own unique way.

On balance, a decent enough drink. I liked it just fine, though without any kind of rabid enthusiasm – it was from somewhere new, that’s all. You could drink it neat, no issues. Personally I thought the flavours were a mite too heavy (it stopped just short of being cloying) and meshed rather clumsily in a way that edged towards a muddle rather than something clearer and more distinct that would have succeeded better.  Much like the Tanduay, Mekhong, Tuzemak, Bundie or even the Don Papa rums, I suspect it is made based on a local conception of rum, and is for local palates.  Add to that the terroire concept and you can see why it tastes so off-base to one weaned on Caribbean tipple.  There’s a subtle difference from any of the British West Indian rums I’ve tried over the years, and though the Two Indies is a combo of several nations’ rums, I can’t separate the constituents and tell you with assurance, “Oh yeah, this comes from Foursquare” or “That’s Hampden” or even “PM!”  (and no, I don’t know whether these were the constituents).

So, they have used jaggery rather than molasses to make it, blended their way around a mishmash of profiles, and while I liked it and was intrigued, I didn’t believe all that was really needed and may even have made it less than its potential.  In Guyanese creole, when we see that kind of thing showing itself off as an artistic blending choice we usually smile, grunt “jiggery-pokery” and then shrug and fill another tumbler.  That pretty much sums things up for me, so I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that’s a compliment or not.

(82/100)

Other notes

The rum makes no mention of its age, and nothing I’ve unearthed speaks to it.  That was also part of my email to Amrut, so this post will likely be updated once I get a response.

Amrut Old Port Deluxe Rum – Review

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Jul 302010
 

(Publicity Photo)

First posted 30 July 2010 on Liquorature.

Pungent, full and pleasant to drink.  Amrut may be taking the whisky world by storm, but I think this may have been the real shot across the bows

Didn’t Clint and the Last Hippie just post good reviews of Amrut’s fusion whisky the other day?  In researching the second of three new rums for the July 2010 gathering, I discovered (much to my surprise), that the same company out of Bangalore India, makes this very capable young rum called Old Port (I can’t get any details on ageing, distillation methods or composition for this baby, alas). Now India having spoken English longer than America, being a British colony ever since Clive in 1757 (look up Plassey, ye historically challenged ones), I sort of expect the whisky production (and definitely gin), but this was the first rum from there I had ever managed to snag.  This is the dark side of having so little choice, here in Calgary: you grab anything new with a price tag and hope for the best, and in your hurry to elbow the other guy out of the way, you don’t read the label carefully enough. I should have picked up the reference.

The bottle is short and squat, and the dark brown liquid sloshes invitingly within.  The nose is candied caramel, and the molasses from which it is made comes through clearly.  It smells a bit like a spiced rum, to be honest, sweet and thick.  Neat, that caramel charges at you right out of the gate, and you also get hints of cinnamon, and a spicy undertone of some kind.  There’s something unidentifiable buried under there, that spicy note which harkens to muscatel grapes, bananas or perhaps prunes, and I can only attribute that to either the distillation method, the source cane (remember how the Bundie blew us all away because of its crazy taste utterly at odds with our conceptions of rum?  same thing here, but in a much much better way) or some subtle spice addition in the blend that gives Old Port Deluxe a distinctive taste and bite all its own.  Whatever it is, I liked it, and the the overall texture and taste in the mouth were pleasant and tasted of just enough sweet. The burn on the back of the throat was a sort of dark rich caramel, deep yet not sharp. It’s not entirely successful as a sipping rum – lack of care in making this a successful marriage of flavours and tastes mitigate against that – but as mixer, I thought it was excellent

Amrut distillery was founded in 1948 (that would be the year the British left), and since India is the second largest sugar cane producer in the world after Brazil, is it any surprise they have made some kind of spirit out of it? For the most part and for many years they served the local “country hooch”  market, but have in recent years branched out international… primarily in fine whiskies.  The rum component of their production – the part that isn’t for internal consumption – is still relatively unknown.  In part this is because of the craziness of the Indian liquor landscape: there are thirty-three states in India and each has its own liquor policy – Gandhi’s philosophy on prohibition make booze illegal in Gujerat, for example. The sugar lobby prevents local country spirits from being legalized;  import taxes on foreign liquor are stupendously high…and yet the horribly large shot serving preferred in places like the Punjab makes India one of the largest tippling nations in the world. The British influence makes whisky preferred to rum as a sign of the upper classes (poor rum – no respect on the shelves of Calgary, and now none in the tastes of India either…sigh)

From country hooch, local tipple, flavoured vodkas, gins, brandies and whiskies, all based on molasses, to premium whiskies like Fusion and its counterparts is quite a step.  But I have to tell you that the rum as a whole wasn’t bad at all, and I liked it a lot.  It didn’t really have much competition that evening – el Dorado Five and the disappointing Mount Gay Extra Old – so it turned out to be the sleeper of the evening, in my opinion.  With the gradually increasing prescence of this 60+ year old distillery on the world liquor stage, all I can say is I look forward to their premium offerings to come: Curt was impressed with their whiskies, but I gotta tell you, if this was an example of their rums, they are worth watching in the future for something really stellar.

(#032)(Unscored)

Other Notes

  • There is a peculiar absence of information about this rum in spite of its fame.  Nowhere is it noted what kind of still it came from, how long it was aged, what are the components of the blend, or whether it derived from molasses, cane juice or jaggery. That includes the reviewers (one dating back to 2009) as well as Amrut’s own site.