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

McDowell’s No.1 “Celebration” Matured XXX Dark Rum (India) – Review

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Dec 092024
 

N4026

Background

In the various reviews of the rums made by Old Monk, Camikara, Makazai, Amrut and Rhea, the observation was made (several times) that Indian rums don’t really have that good a reputation outside their country of origin, especially recently with the move towards greater transparency and purity. The rums there just never really go critical outside the diaspora and are viewed in many quarters inside and outside India as (at best) second tier also-rans.

There are several reasons for this. For one, In India itself rum has always been seen as a commoners’ drink, not a premium one, with all the snobbery this implies (it’s no accident that Amrut supercharged its whiskies’ reputation by first making them reputable outside India). Secondly, the financial incentives are minimal when the companies that make these products have what amounts to a near captive market of many hundreds of millions of local drinkers – why would they export when they can make easier money selling in-country?  And thirdly lack of awareness and lack of perceived quality go hand in hand with a dearth of information about how the rums are made – few companies give out any kind of information about that aspect of things (although colourful origin stories are legion).

Yet the country cannot be ignored forever. Companies like Piccadilly, Mohan Meakin, Amrut and United Spirits (owned by Diageo) are global sellers and massive conglomerates, irrespective of what they make. And so it behooves us to know more about the rums they make, be they ever so humble. This is one of them.

The Rum

Although “humble” may not be the exact word to use for McDowell’s No.1 “Celebration”, the flagship rum made by United Spirits (of which Diageo owns a controlling stake). The rum, first introduced in 1990, is one of only a few made by the company – the others are a white rum called “Caribbean,” a Gold called “Cariba”, and an aged “Old Cask” about which little is known except it was first released in 2004. There are likely others – we just don’t see them very much. But the Celebration is touted as the top selling rum in the world and I’ve seen news articles that proclaim the millions of cases it sells annually, so certainly it’s an elephant among field mice, and does brisk business.

That said, there’s the usual annoying paucity of production details. We know it’s made from molasses, though some dispute this and suggest jaggery may be the true source material. My understanding is that for such mass-market rums, a multi-column still uses molasses to get to 95% ABV or so, and then it’s aged, coloured and blended. What it’s blended with is a subject of some debate – it’s been said that “real” spirits are added, spices, flavourings, take your pick – the lack of disclosure is a common feature in the country were a bottle of this stuff can retail for under two bucks. Also, McDowell’s has 36 manufacturing centres across India and a score or so distilleries, so where exactly it’s made is unclear – Chip Dykstra, in a 2011 review, said it was made in Goa, without attribution. And it’s released at 42.8%, which, as I noted before, is a standard in India and equates to 75 degrees proof in the old Imperial system, which was never quite abandoned.

Even with the slightly-over-living-room-strength, it’s thin pickings on the nose. It smells vague, even indeterminate, first of plastic and detergent, and then of warm caramel drizzled over vanilla ice cream. A few fruits – cherries, ripe red grapes, tangerines – disturb the flow, but after a few minutes it’s paint on new drywall, plasticine, and the scent of a well oiled leather couch that’s old enough to leak some stuffing. It is, in short, a very weird smelling rum and one can only wonder how it beat out Old Monk, which is somewhat more “traditional” in its aromas.

Anyway, on tasting it, that thin profile persists – it’s as scrawny as a hungry cur in a dark alley. Yet some flavours make it through, and this is where we can detect some spices: cardamom, vanilla, salted caramel are the predominating notes; there’s damp tobacco and black tea, a touch of brine (no olives), and not a whole lot of fruitiness, crisp or tart or otherwise. There is some sweetness to it, but not a lot (and a hydrometer tests it as clean), and it goes down easily enough, just without any sort of flavours to excite the palate. Even the finish displays that sort of lacklustre “it’s okay” kind of vibe – short, easy, unaggressive, lots of caramel and vanilla and a few spices to round off the dram.

Reading the notes above, you can see why — even if it is the top selling rum in the world — it is met in the west with a shrug and a meh (if not outright disdain). One must concede that it’s a rum made originally for the indigenous market, where a different mindset exists on how it should be made, or taste like — and where those tastes are considered desirable; those who adhere to its unthreatening, easy charms won’t worry too much about disclosure or distillation or additives. Myself I just wish they would tell us – I mean, my God, we’re almost in 2025, dammit, why does this continually have to something we have to beg for?

Summing up this overlong piece, let’s just say that yes, it’s a reasonable rum, sure it is, just not one that rings the bells and makes for happy “wow!” moments and high fives. You can sip it easily enough and it tastes decent enough, if somewhat different than the norm. It simply lacks what one lady I know tartly refers to as “seriousness.” It’s all promises and no follow through, resting its dandified laurels on the bartop, while resolutely refusing to pony up when the bill comes due. If this rum was her boyfriend, she’d tolerate it for a while, and dump him the following week.

(#1100)(79/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

Company Bio (summarized from a longer work in progress)

McDowell’s has its origins way back in 1826 when Angus McDowell founded the firm in what was then called Madras (now Chennai). Initially the company didn’t make anything, just imported liquor, tobacco products, and various other consumer goods into India for the expatriate British population. It was clearly successful enough to form itself into a Limited company in 1898 and continued trading until after Independence – however, in 1951 Vittal Mallya of United Breweries Group bought the company and named the combined entity United Spirits Limited. 

The first distillery was built in Kerala in 1959 and initially USL made spirits under contract. By 1963 they were confident enough to launch their own brandy (called “Golden Grape”) and slowly expanded their capacity by buying other spirits making companies, while also building new distilleries and distribution networks.  However, so far as I can tell, rum was never a branded product in the portfolio identified with USL – what was produced stayed with the acquired companies’ already established brands.

The next generation of the family began to become active in 1973 when Vijay Mallya became a director of McDowell’s (as the subsidiary continued to be called – there was no opprobrium attached to the company name as had attended Dyer Meakin, so no reason, apparently, to change it), and ten years later he took over the whole company as chairman. The Celebration branded line of rums came out during his tenure and their distribution had expanded to the point where by the 2010s they had not only exceeded Old Monk’s sales, but had actually overtaken Bacardi as well.

Cash flow problems and declining sales (as well as some poor business decisions and scandals) in the early 2010s eventually forced Vijay Mallya to sell a majority stake in the Group to Diageo, and that’s the situation today.

 

Makazai Gold “Tribute” Rum (Goa, India) – Review

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Aug 192024
 

For those of not actually from India or part of the extended diaspora, the only rums from the subcontinent which most of us ever knew about were the Old Monk, the Amrut Two Indies and Old Port, and maybe a smattering of others like MacDowell’s, Hercules, Contessa, and, more recently, the Camikara. Yet India has been making distilled spirits for centuries, including from sugar cane, and so it comes as no surprise that as the growth of rum as a premium spirit continues around the world, local entrepreneurs would look to establish small craft brands or distilleries of their own. Such spirits would go beyond the doctored mass-market hooch which permeates the local market and adhere to more exacting standards set by small microdistilleries around the world.

Whether the recently established company of Stilldistilling Spirits will be able to mine that vein of perceived quality remains to be seen. I do not hold out much hope when a company tells us little (or nothing) about sourcing methods, production, blending and ageing strategy. We do, on the other hand, get a lot of hagiographies about the founder, and much elevated rhetoric about inspirations, logo selection and mission statements. Which, to me, is less than helpful in assessing the rum itself.

Be that as it may, here is what is known about the Makazai Gold “Tribute” Rum. All ingredients and physical components of the bottle are Indian made. The actual source of the distillate is never disclosed, though it is implied to be Goa or Maharashtra, and is stated in a 2021 Rumporter article to be 2½ year old aged cane spirit from the Punjab (something of a problem since that could mean a neutral spirit or one from cane juice) combined with molasses spirit (ditto, except now we don’t know if there is any ageing involved here as well). Blending and bottling takes place in Goa where the owners have leased a facility to do so, and until recently the rum was only sold there. It’s 42.8% ABV, which is sort of standard strength over there, and equates to 75 proof (or “25 degrees under proof”) under the old Imperial system.

With this background dispensed with, what is the gold rum actually like?

Succinctly put, it’s a bit better than entry level, but not much. There you are.  You may cease reading.

The nose is immediately problematic because not much happens and what does happen is lacklustre  – which is a shame, because what little one does sense, is at least intriguing.  There’s ghee and cooking oil smoking in an overheated cast iron pan, plus turmeric and honey as the primary elements.  These are then added to with a slightly sweet aroma of stewed apples, cinnamon, light vanilla, cardamom and tinned peaches.  It’s all very delicate and vague, and there’s a thinness to it that doesn’t really work for me.

On the palate it’s no better: “thin and flat” read my terse notes. It’s somewhat akin to the let down of the Camikara 3YO (review coming soon to the unread blog near you) which was also 42.8% and had a similarly scrawny corpus. It is only with some effort that I can pick out honey, figs, biscuits in milky tea, and (oddly enough) some red currants – it’s nice but honestly, not enough either; and the finish, which is short in duration and quite easy, closes things off with something of a whimper: some indeterminate dark fruit, cinnamon, vanilla and a touch of brine and salty caramel chocolate

That there are so many notes to write down is to the rum’s credit, and there is a certain “tawniness” to it that I like – I’ve detected that ghur note in the profile of many Indian rums, suggesting a jaggery based source. The issue is that the various parts don’t play well together – the balance is off and it leans too much to the sweet spices side without a countervailing tart or sour aspect that would make it more interesting. Plus, the whole thing lacks body, heft, a certain force that would make it memorable. If they ever solve that issue – whether by naking it stronger or improving the blend or actually distilling their own rum instead of getting it from elsewhere and cobbling a blend together – then they may really have something to show off. For now, the rum train has limped into the station minus several cars.

(#1087)(79/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

  • My deepest appreciation to Nikkhil of WhiskyFlu, who provided the bottle gratis. His website and IG feed is always worth a look, and he’s a great guy to boot.
  • My hydrometer tests this out at 43%, so it’s clean from that perspective.
  • The now-usual video review of this rum is here

Company background

Makazai is actually a two word term “Maka Zai” meaning “I want” in Konkani, the language spoken in Goa and Maharashtra (in central-west India). It was made the brand name by the founder of the company, Katsuri Banerjee, who left a career in financial services to take up bartending in a bar named Koko, located in an upscale neighborhood in Mumbai called Lower Parel. 

Once she qualified as a bartender she wanted to also become a blender and create her own spirits – whether whisky or rum or gin is not entirely clear, though eventually, as we see here, it was rum that won out perhaps because the competition for premium craft rum space was less. After interning at an (unnamed) Indian distillery and settling on making a rum, Stilldistilling Spirits was incorporated in 2020 with funds raised from friends and family and managed to survive the global COVID shutdown by concentrating initially on branding and packaging, before emerging in 2021 with a white rum (the “Bartender’s Edition” geared to the mixologists) and a gold one (the “Tribute Edition” – it is meant to be a standard celebratory tipple for everyone). There is an aged limited edition called the Mesma with a mere 600 bottles in circulation, about which as little is known as the other two.

What little most non-residents know of alcohol in Goa comes about because they went there on a vacation, or tasted the local liquor called Feni. However it would appear that Goa has, of late, become something of a manufacturing hub for distilled homegrown spirits (Google maps shows around forty distilleries there), not least due to the ease of laws relating to liquor production and marketing which constrain other provinces in a still-conservative India. Whether these are new or old companies, at least some of the blend components of the rums released by the Makazai comes from one or more of these establishments, though it is my personal belief that some is sourced from elsewhere in India (the references to “heritage suppliers” suggests this). The company has leased a blending and bottling plant in Goa to handle the physical production, and has expended from and initial 200 cases of sales back in early 2021, to 2,000 in early 2022, at the time mostly sold in Goa, Karnataka, and Maharashtra (and expansion to other parts of India ongoing).

Opinion

While I appreciate the sheer guts, blood, sweat and tears that must go into getting an enterprise like this off the ground in India – especially for a female entrepreneur in what is a resolutely male dominated profession and tipple – I am somewhat impatient with Stilldistilling’s website and the press articles I’ve referred to in this article.  That stems from an excess of marketing folderol that’s all sound and fury signifying nothing, versus a paucity of facts that might help a consumer get, you know, some real info. This is the sort of thing that annoys me with rums from the Americas, but irrespective of location, for people who should have their fingers on the pulse of current trends in transparency to be pulling this kind of advertising-only crap on us when launching a new brand strikes me as shortsighted, and somewhat indifferent to us as consumers.

I deduct no points for lack of disclosure: however, the lack of details in what makes the rum what it is annoying. We don’t know too many things here. Which distillery (or distilleries) provided the distillate; data about the base source of cane juice, molasses or neutral spirit; what kind of still or stills made it; anything about fermentation; how long it was aged for and where and in what kinds of barrels; or what the outturn was. Not all of these things are necessary – indeed, one could cynically argue that none of them truly are, if all you want to do is drink the thing – but the fact remains that in today’s rum world where the scars of the sugar wars and battles over transparency still run deep, and cause elevated blood pressure to this day, it is ridiculous to not be provided at least some of it. And purported alco-bev veterans are supposed to be behind behind this rum? One wonders if they learned nothing from all the social media bloodletting over the last decade.

Modern consumers and producers who really want rum to be taken to the next level cannot be made or expected to accept a rum on trust, which has zero verifiable background info. Not in this day and age. Trust and reputation for square dealing and disclosure go a long way to establishing a company’s street cred and character.  If a new rum producing company claims to want to become a true craft premium rum producer, then it had better start making disclosure a priority – otherwise, like so many other Indian rums, it will remain there and never attain the global heights to which they aspire.

 

Old Monk Gold Reserve 12 YO Rum (India) – Review

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Jul 312024
 

Old Monk is almost a cultural institution in India, the way some distilleries’ brands, in their countries of origin – think J. Wray White Overproof in Jamaica, for example, or XM and El Dorado in Guyana, Angostura in Trinidad, AH Riise in Denmark, Stroh in Austria, Tanduay in the Philippines, Bundie in Australia…well you get the drift. The company that makes it, Mohan Meakin (previously Dyer Meakin), is among the first of the major distilleries set up in colonial India (in 1855), and I have covered it extensively in an enormously detailed post, and won’t rehash it here.

First issued in 1954, the Old Monk line of aged rums deliberately targeted a more affluent middle and upper class tippling audience. Previously — and still now, to a great extent — rum in India had been made as an additive-laden neutral spirit meant to make money on razor thin margins via massive sales to the poorer classes who could only afford a few annas. Predating the wave of premiumization that would crest a half century later, Mohan Meakin (the company was renamed 1966) pursued a strategy of ensuring it was available in luxury hotels and the military officers’ clubs. It rapidly became an institution in the whole country and the diaspora kept sales brisk wherever they emigrated, which is why I can find it all over the world today.

By 2024 the line of Old Monk had been expanded way beyond the original 7 YO blended XXX rum. Among others that were introduced (or withdrawn) over the years, there was the Matured Rum, Very Old Vatted, The Legend, Supreme, Gold Reserve Rum (of various ages), Orange Rum, White Rum and of course the grandaddy of them all, the XXX 7 YO vatted in the dimpled squat bottle, which is what most people have tried (and reviewed). 

The rum we are looking at today was manufactured in  March 2023, is 12 years old, bottled at 42.8% and we know rather little about it except that it comes from molasses: that’s because, in a bewildering lack of marketing mojo, there does not appear to be a website for the company that is devoted to the product. For now, let’s call it a 12YO because we have nothing better to go on and that’s what they say it is (I have added a few comments below on other bits and pieces I dug up here and there).

Reviewers who have written about Old Monk — including myself — have almost always cast a jaundiced eye at the rums of the company, and suggested they have been adulterated, added to or otherwise messed with. Even with “clean” hydrometer tests, it’s hard not to come to that conclusion. And that’s because of the way it smells, and tastes.

Consider: the nose opens with an aroma of raw honeycombs, sweet peaches in syrup, cardamom, sandalwood, ripe bananas and a touch of brine and olives.  There’s no citrus element here to balance things off and what fruits there are of the softer, less acidic kind, and after opening up one can sense some plastic, brown sugar, burnt caramel and smoking oil in a wok.

Tastewise, some of these peculiar notes persist, though much reduced. First of all it seems a little thick with sweetness, honey, cola and cardamom – it is this aspect that most often gives people pause and ask whether there’s an additive in there. Most of the softer points of the nose return for an encore, specifically the caramel, molasses, soft bananas and syrup, with some balance brought in by a touch of brine and olives.  The finish is nothing special – short, dry, leather and smoke and some beeswax and honey.  That’s about it.

Hydrometer test aside, the rum tastes reasonably okay and the balance is nice: it’s a step up from the regular 7 YO XXX. It displays just enough of an edge and is just different enough to excite curiosity from the tyro, or interest from a pro. I liked it enough to give it the score I do, but am unsure whether it works in the more common cocktails given that it marches to a slightly different beat. But for a 12 YO and for the quality it does have, it’s well worth just taking by itself and that’s how I’d suggest you try it.

(#1084)(84/100) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

  • A short video recap is here.
  • Hydrometer tests out at 41.8% ABV, which works out to +/-4 g/L and within the margin of error.
  • Additional comments on (lack of) production data: from various websites we can infer it is a vatted blend, aged in large oak vats or in standard oak casks (but not what kind) and then blended. One source mentions that a bit of the original Old Monk blend that’s more than 50 years old is always added in for consistency, but I chose to doubt that. Some say the source is jaggery, not actually molasses, which I can accept, though there is, as usual, no corroboration.  What all this does is cast doubts on the age statement because we simply have no way of checking how truthful the company is about something when they say so little about anything.
  • From MM Company bio: The question of who exactly the Old Monk was, remains a matter of some conjecture and there are three stories [1] it’s a stylized Benedictine monk such as originally inspired V.R. Mohan [2] it represents one of the founders of the company, H.G. Meakin himself, and is an homage to his influence, and [3] it represents a British monk who used to hang around the factory where the rums were made and aged, shadowing the master blender – his advice was so good that when Old Monk was first launched the name and bottle were based on him (this of course implies that aged rum was being made and sold by the company for years before 1954, but I simply have no proof of this and so cannot state it with assurance).

Key Rums of the World – Old Monk Vatted 7 YO Blended Rum (India)

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Oct 232023
 

 

Originally published as a standalone review in October 2023; revised and extended to Key Rums series in January 2024

Few rums from India make a splash in the western world, and that’s a peculiar thing since it’s entirely possible they were among the first people to actually make any kind of spirit from sugar cane (although it’s likely the crown goes to the Iranians whose “good wine of sugar” Marco Polo supposedly enjoyed on his travels) and for sure have some of the best selling rum brands on the planet. We may not hear of them very often but McDowell’s No. 1. Contessa, Old Port, Hercules, Two Indies and a few others, have a huge market footprint out east.

Historically, rum in India has always been a down-market tipple for the masses, largely because it lacked the snooty pretensions of whiskies (though they, for decades, laboured under similar perceptions until they changed their game), and was made in large quantities using relatively easily available molasses, panela or cane juice. On a larger scale, rum was popular when made by distilling companies because its method of production was essentially column still near-neutral alcohol plus additives for taste: cheap and easy to make at scale, priced to sell. This made rum do well at the rural level — where the majority of Indians still live — but cut no ice at all in the rest of the world.

Among the first to break this mould was the company of Mohan Meakin (previously Dyer Meakin), which was established in the mid-1800s. They made at least some kind of rum all along, but it was the 1950s that were key: in December 1954 they released the first Old Monk rum to the armed forces in its signature Old Parr-style bottle, aged around seven years. It shattered class barriers by being marketed not just the rank and file jawans but to the officer class, and gave rum as a whole a boost by making it more socially acceptable, even respectable, up the social scale.

From that humble beginning sprang a brand of uncommon durability and popularity. For the next fifty years, anchored by huge sales to the military and canny placement in five-star hotels, Old Monk rum was the most popular brand of rum in India, with increasing sales abroad. It became the spirit of choice among university students for decades, and as these educated young people fanned out and emigrated across the world they brought their nostalgic love for the rum with them, establishing the brand in new countries where the company set up distribution arrangements in many countries to satisfy this demand. For a while, so strong was cultural attachment to Old Monk that the global diaspora regularly requested relatives bring some with them when they came visiting, or brought it back themselves when they did. 

Yet even if its sales were gargantuan (for decades, it was one of the five top selling rums in the world), outside a few major regional, internal and historical markets, it was never a truly global widespread seller; one rarely if ever saw the squat and tubby bottles at international spirits or bar expos, and though I’ve passed the vatted 7YO several times on local shelves in several countries, I’ve never seen it at a single festival. And the general opinion of those modern reviewers who have tried it is somewhat dismissive: adjectives like “crude”, “oversweet”, “rough” and “spiced” are common in most write ups I’ve seen, and it’s often relegated it to mixer status, with grudging compliments occasionally thrown in. The Old Monk series of rums, then – and there are quite a few – attract a curious mix of indifference, scorn and loving nostalgia from rum drinkers, some of which is understandable, some less so.  

It continues to be made, however, and continues to sell and for all intents and purposes remains almost a cultural institution in India, so its importance to understanding rum around the world must be accepted. Unlike Appleton, say, it doesn’t look like they have continually tweaked the recipe, and the bottle we see nowadays is recognizable the same as the original. It remains a vatted 7 year old rum from molasses, or that nutrient rich variant called jaggery, which we’ve met before (opinions vary, and the company isn’t telling).I don’t know what the original strength was back when it was first introduced, but at least for the last decade and a half I’ve only seen it sold at 42.8%. Let’s take it as it is, then, and move on.

As a rum it presses all the right buttons.  You can smell molasses, sandalwood, some tar, and overripe bananas, plus some tannics. That’s the first pass.  After opening up it reaches further and hits the spice jar: ginger, vanilla, cardamom, cumin, I would say, and some sweet paprika, all of which is nice and heavy and almost perfumed, while never losing sight of the fact that it’s a rum.

On the tongue the taste is dark and medium heavy, with strong notes of salted – almost bitter –  caramel and unsweetened chocolate, coffee grounds, molasses and licorice. The strength is just about right for all this smorgasbord of subcontinental notes and doesn’t burn a whole lot going down, so sipping neat is an option.  It’s not that sweet and there’s that vague spice shelf drifting in from the nose even here. The finish is like that as well,  being mild, short, breathy, warm, and again, redolent of licorice, caramel and spices, plus what the Little Big Caner called a mix of pepsi and jerky (go figure).

If pressed for a comparison, I’d suggest that the Old Monk has a fair bit in common with the dusky heaviness of the Demeraras, or perhaps Goslings and other dark molasses-forward rums. You can sense the similarities with the Amrut’s Two Indies or the Old Port as well; except that it has its own vibe and that might be because it is either (wholly or partly) made from jaggery, or because it really does have something added to it. We don’t know. Old Monk has always been looked at slightly askance, because it’s hard to shake the feeling this is not what we’re used to, not a rum that’s made completely “clean” and something’s been sprinkled in. But honestly, it’s not too bad, though it sometimes feels a little unfinished. I like the offbeat and unusual in rum, and in the main the Old Monk is very much like Amrut’s whiskies are: definitely what they’re supposed to be — a rum in this case —  just with a slight kink and twist to mark them out as noticeably different. On its technical merits and how it noses and tastes I can’t say my score is wrong: but since this is a rum from outside our regular area, there are bound to be variations. 

So with all that, does it deserve to be in the pantheon of those rums I deem “key” to understanding  the spirt? I argue that it is. Firstly it remains immensely popular and among more than just expatriate Indians, and needs to be seen for what it is. Secondly, it has a long history, both as a company and a brand, and shows something of how rum developed outside the more comfortingly familiar regions we extol in every other post on the subject. We need to understand and appreciate more than just rums from the Caribbean and Latin America, and have to learn about profiles that are at odds with our perceptions of how rum should be made, or should taste. No rum that has lasted this long without serious change and still sells this well, can be ignored just because it’s not in current fashion. It needs to be acknowledged as a rum from its region, for its people, maybe even of its time. Amrut conquered the whisky world by making whiskies to global standards.  Old Monk becomes a key rum by resolutely adhering to its own.

(#1035)(79/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Other Notes

  • I’m unsure how different the Old Monk Supreme XXX is from this one. Perhaps it’s just the bottle as both are supposedly 7 years old.
  • There’s a lot of backstory to the brand in the company profile, which I strongly recommend taking the time to read.

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.

Old Monk Supreme XXX Old Vatted Rum – Review

 No Responses »
Jul 132020
 

The Old Monk series of rums, perhaps among the best known to the Western world of those hailing from India, excites a raft of passionate posts whenever it comes up for mention, ranging from enthusiastic fanboy positivity, to disdain spread equally between its lack of disclosure about provenance and make, and the rather unique taste. Neither really holds water, but it is emblematic of both the unstinting praise of adherents who “just like rum” without thinking further, and those who take no cognizance of cultures other than their own and the different tastes that attend to them.

That’s unfortunate — because we should pay attention to other countries’ rums.  As I remarked in a rambling interview in early July 2020, concentration on the “Caribbean 5” makes one ignore other parts of the world far too often, and make no mistake, rum really is a global spirit, often indigenously so, in a way whisky or gin or vodka are not.  One of the things I really enjoy about it is its immense variety, which the Old Monk, Dzama, Batavia Arrack, Bundaberg , Mhoba, Cor Cor, Juan Santos and Bacardi (to list just a few examples from around the world) showcase every bit as well as the latest drooled-over Hampden or Foursquare.

Which is not to say, I’m afraid, that this rum from India deserves unstinting and uncritical accolades as some sort of natural backcountry traditional spirit made in The Old Way for generations. To begin with, far too little is known about it.  Leaving aside the very interesting history of the Indian company Mohan Meakin, official blurbs talk about it being made in the “traditional manner” and then never say what that actually is. No production details are provided, either on the bottle or the company website –  but given its wild popularity in India and the diaspora, and its massive sales numbers even in a time of demise (2016 – ~4 million cases) it suggests something made on a large scale, with an ageing process in place. Is it truly a blend of various 12 year old rums, as some sources suggest? No way of knowing, but at the price point it sells for, it strikes me as unlikely. Beyond that and the strength (42.8% ABV), we have nothing.

That means we take the rum as it is almost without preconceptions, and indeed, the initial notes of the smell are promising: it’s thick and solid, redolent of boiled sweets, caramel bon bons, crushed walnuts, bitter cocoa, coffee grounds, ashes, molasses, brine, even some olives.  But it’s too much of the sweet, and it smells – I’m choosing this word carefully – cloying.  There is just too much thickness here, it’s a morass of bad bananas, sweet molasses and brown sugar rotting in the sun, and reminds me of nothing so much as jaggery, such as that which I recall with similar lack of fondness from the Amrut Two Indies.  But as a concession there was a bit of brine and clear cane juice, just insufficient to enthuse.

The sensation of thickness and dampening was much more pronounced on the palate, and I think this is where people’s opinions start to diverge.  There’s a heavy and furry softness of texture on the mouthfeel, tastes of molasses, coffee, cocoa, with too much brown sugar and wet jaggery; it reminds me of a hot toddy, and I don’t say that with enthusiasm.  It’s a cocktail ready-made and ready to drink, good for a cold day and even a citrus hint  (which rescues it from being a completely cloying mess) doesn’t do enough to rescue it from the bottom of the glass. And the finish, well, noting to be surprised at – it’s short, it’s sweet, it’s thick, and it’s thankfully over very quickly.

I can’t rid myself of the feeling something has been added here.  Sugar, caramel, spices, I don’t know. Wes at the FRP did the hydrometer test on it and it came up clean, yet you can’t taste this thing and tell me it’s as pure as Caesar’s Jamaican wife, not even close. In point of fact, though, what this rum reminds me of is its cousin the Amrut Two Indies, the Nepalese Kukhri (though not as sweet), a low-end Jamaican Rum (Myer’s, Appleton V/X maybe, or even a less interesting el Dorado 12 Year Old.  Because of the profile I describe, it can certainly be had by itself or mixed into a sugar-free cola very nicely and therein lies, I suspect, much of its appeal as a spirit in Asia.

In Asia maybe – but not in Europe. The bartender at the Immertreu Bar in Berlin showed some surprise when I selected it from his back shelf, and shook his head with evident disappointment. “For this, you don’t need a tasting glass” he sniffed, not even bothering to hide his disdain.  And after I had smelled, tasted and tried it, then looked askance at the glass, he shrugged…”I told you so.” He didn’t understand that had to try the rum whether or not I believed him, but to be honest, this was one of those occasions where I wish I had listened harder.  Back in the 1970s and 1980s Old Monk may have outsold all other brands in India, and ten years later could even price itself higher than Bacardi in Germany, and outsell it….but those glory days, I’m afraid, are gone. The world has moved on. Old Monk hasn’t, and that’s both its attraction and its downfall to those who try it for the first time, and go on to either love it or hate it. Few of these, however, will remain completely indifferent.

(#745)(79/100)

Other Notes

  • I am assuming a column still product derived from molasses or jaggery.  Online background suggests it is a blend of 12 year old rums, but the official website makes no such claim and neither does the label, so I’ll leave it as a blended aged rum without further elaboration. 
  • Whether it was distilled past 90% or taken off the still before that is equally unknown. The cynic in me suggests it might be flavoured ethanol, not just because of the taste, but also since the company never actually says anything about the production process and this invites both suspicion and censure in this day and age.
  • The bottle shape is not all glass – from the shoulders up it is plastic.
  • Who the figure of the monk represents is unclear. One possibly apocryphal story suggests there was a British monk who used to hang around the factory where Mohan Meakin’s rums were made and aged, shadowing the master blender – his advice was so good that when Old Monk was first launched the name and bottle were based on him. Another story goes it was the idea of one of the founders, Ved Mohan, who was inspired by the life of Benedictine monks. And a third variation is that it’s actually H.G. Meakin who took over the Dyer Brewery and distillery in 1887 and formed Dyer-Meakin.
  • Wikipedia, the Times of India, Business Today and Mid-Day.com (an Indian online paper) say the brand was launched in 1954, and some European marketing material says 1935.  I think 1954 is likely correct.
  • The XXX in the title refers to “Very-Extra-Good-Something” and is not meant to be salacious.
  • The bottle shape was unique enough for me to give it a mention in the disposable clickbait list of 12 Interesting Bottle Designs.
  • A detailed biography of Mohan Meakin is available here.

Rhea Distillers Gold Rum – Review

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Jan 302020
 

India is one of these countries that makes a lot of rum but is not reknowned for it — and if you doubt that, name five Indian rums, quick.  Aside from a few global brands like Amrut (who are more into whiskies but also dabbled in rum with the Old Port Deluxe and the Two Indies rums) rum makers from there seem, for the moment, quite happy to sell into their internal or regional markets and eschew going abroad, and are equally indifferent to the foreign rum festival circuit where perhaps they could get more exposure or distribution deals. Perhaps being located in the most populous region of the earth, they don’t need to. The market is literally right there for them.

One such product from India came across my radar the other day: named Rhea Gold Rum, it’s made in Goa on the west coast of the subcontinent, and I can truthfully say I knew nothing about it when I tried it, so for reasons that will become clear, let me run you straight past through the tasting notes before going on.

Light amber in colour and bottled at 43%, it certainly did not nose like your favoured Caribbean rum.  It smelled initially of congealed honey and beeswax left to rest in an old unaired cupboard for six months – that same dusty, semi-sweet waxy and plastic odour was the most evident thing about it. Letting it rest produced additional aromas of brine, olives and ripe mangoes in a pepper sauce.  Faint vanilla and caramel – was this perhaps made from jaggery, or added to after the fact? Salty cashew nuts, fruit loops cereal and that was most or less it – a fairly heavy, dusky scent, darkly sweet.

The palate continued that deep profile of rich and nearly overripe mangoes — big, soft, yellow and juicy, just on the edge of turning mushy.  Some tastes of pears, papayas, peaches, but not as sweet, accompanied by vanilla and nuttiness…but overall, the cloying thickness of overripe fruits became gradually dominating, even at that relatively tame strength, almost overpowering all others. There was no subtlety here, just a pillow fight. Finish was too faint and syrupy (in taste not in texture) to be interesting in any meaningful way.  It has some fruit, some salt caramel, it finishes and that’s pretty much it.

In my original written notes I opined that this is a spiced or added-to rum — such things are, after all, not unknown in India.  But in point of fact, it reminded me more strongly of the guava-based “rum” from Cuba called the Guyabita del Pinar, with which it seems to share kinship from half a world away, without being quite as good.

As it turns out, that wasn’t far off the mark. The company that makes it – Rhea Distillers – is much more famous (especially in Goa) for making variations of the local spiced alcoholic spirit based on cashews, or sometimes, coconut milk.  Called feni, it is the most popular tipple in the region, a softer, easier cousin to clairins, somewhat akin to grogues though made from fruit, not came — and is, as an aside, subject to a GI in its own right.

The Gold Rum was made from sugar cane juice according to the site and that makes it a  “real” rum – still, bearing in mind the priorities and main products of the company, the question of why it tastes so much of cashews is not hard to guess (nothing is written anywhere on the web page about production methods, except that cane spirit is the base).  Moreover, in those competitions where it was entered (ISWC 2018 and World Rum Awards 2018), it won prizes in the ‘flavoured’ or ‘spiced’ categories – not that of a straight product.

What else? Well, the front label wasn’t very helpful; the back label says, among other things, that it is aged in oak barrels without subsequent filtration for about three years and consists of “rum distillate”, water, E150a colouring, and without additional aromatics or artificial additives (the rest is health advisories, distribution and manufacturer data, shelf life and storage instructions). Well, I don’t know: it may not have any artificial additives, but it sure had something – maybe it was natural additives, like actual cashew fruit or macerate.

The website of the company also lacked any serious data, on either the product or the company background, but whatever the case and however they made it, this is definitely a spiced rum, and for me, not a very good one – perhaps a native of Goa who is used to the local drinks and buys the ubiquitous feni on the street would like it more than I did. Rhea  might be serving a captive market of millions but that’s hardly an endorsement of intrinsic quality or unique production style – or, in this case, of taste.  I found the Rhea unsatisfactory as a sipper, dominated by too few strong and oversweet tastes, and not a drink I could mix easily into any standard cocktail to showcase what aspects of it were more successful.  In short, not my thing.

(#697)(72/100)

Opinion

Full disclosure: I’m not really a fan of spiced rums, believing there’s more than enough good and unspiced stuff out there for me not to bother with rums that are so single mindedly flavoured to the point of drowning out subtler nuances of ageing and terroire…the “real” rum taste, which I prefer. So in a way it was good that I tasted it without knowing what it was. You really did get my unvarnished opinion on the rum, and that was also why I wrote the review that way.

Amrut Two Indies Rum – Review

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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.