Single malt whisky from India ranked among world's best
BANGALORE - A hint of a cautious smile flickers across the face of the master whisky maker as he rolls a drop of the golden liquid around his mouth.
"Peat. Good vanilla. Fruit. Oak. Chocolate. Spice," he mutters thoughtfully, resting a hand on the oak cask in which the dram has spent three years. He takes another sip from his snifter: "And smoky notes! Ha! Very, very nice smoky notes!" He beams.
The scene, played out against a background of hundreds of maturing whisky barrels, could be from any fine Scottish distillery. However, this is not the windswept Islay coast or a misty Speyside glen. This is Bangalore, the semi-tropical IT capital of India.
India, which was introduced to Scotch by the British, is the world's largest consumer of whisky, most of it distilled from cheap molasses and of dubious quality.
Now, however, an Indian dram has the global cognoscenti aglow.
Made in Bangalore from a combination of Indian and imported Scottish barley, Amrut Fusion Single Malt has been judged the world's third-finest by Jim Murray, a Briton who describes himself as the world's first dedicated whisky writer.
The Indian tipple, he writes in the 2010 edition of his Whisky Bible, a reference work regarded as an industry touchstone, was "one of those which commands a big mouthful, a chair with a headrest and ... silence. You will chew for seemingly hours and never quite get to the bottom of its mystical complexity."
The secret, says M. Meyyappan, the technical director of Amrut Distilleries, lies partly in Bangalore's climate. The Deccan plateau is mild by Indian standards but considerably steamier than Scotland.
As the young whisky rests in its oak cask, the loss of alcohol through evaporation - known as "the angels' share" - is accelerated, as is the whisky's reaction with the wood. The result: three years of maturation in Bangalore is reckoned to be equivalent to more than a decade in Scotland.
The accelerated process calls for diligent supervision, which Meyyappan says Amrut is better placed to give than Scotland's much larger distilleries.
The praise for Amrut has opened a new chapter for its producer, a family-owned company that had spent most of its 62-year history making cheap grog for the Indian army.
It became involved in fine malts only in the 1990s when it tried to export early bat-ches to Glasgow curry houses.
Now connoisseurs from Tokyo to London are scrambling to buy it.
According to Murray, the whisky's success highlights how the contours of the industry are shifting as new distilleries in locations as unlikely as Sweden, Iceland and Australia garner acclaim. "The days of the best stuff only hailing from the Highlands are long gone," he said.
The Times, London
Read more: Single malt whisky from India ranked among world's best
BANGALORE - A hint of a cautious smile flickers across the face of the master whisky maker as he rolls a drop of the golden liquid around his mouth.
"Peat. Good vanilla. Fruit. Oak. Chocolate. Spice," he mutters thoughtfully, resting a hand on the oak cask in which the dram has spent three years. He takes another sip from his snifter: "And smoky notes! Ha! Very, very nice smoky notes!" He beams.
The scene, played out against a background of hundreds of maturing whisky barrels, could be from any fine Scottish distillery. However, this is not the windswept Islay coast or a misty Speyside glen. This is Bangalore, the semi-tropical IT capital of India.
India, which was introduced to Scotch by the British, is the world's largest consumer of whisky, most of it distilled from cheap molasses and of dubious quality.
Now, however, an Indian dram has the global cognoscenti aglow.
Made in Bangalore from a combination of Indian and imported Scottish barley, Amrut Fusion Single Malt has been judged the world's third-finest by Jim Murray, a Briton who describes himself as the world's first dedicated whisky writer.
The Indian tipple, he writes in the 2010 edition of his Whisky Bible, a reference work regarded as an industry touchstone, was "one of those which commands a big mouthful, a chair with a headrest and ... silence. You will chew for seemingly hours and never quite get to the bottom of its mystical complexity."
The secret, says M. Meyyappan, the technical director of Amrut Distilleries, lies partly in Bangalore's climate. The Deccan plateau is mild by Indian standards but considerably steamier than Scotland.
As the young whisky rests in its oak cask, the loss of alcohol through evaporation - known as "the angels' share" - is accelerated, as is the whisky's reaction with the wood. The result: three years of maturation in Bangalore is reckoned to be equivalent to more than a decade in Scotland.
The accelerated process calls for diligent supervision, which Meyyappan says Amrut is better placed to give than Scotland's much larger distilleries.
The praise for Amrut has opened a new chapter for its producer, a family-owned company that had spent most of its 62-year history making cheap grog for the Indian army.
It became involved in fine malts only in the 1990s when it tried to export early bat-ches to Glasgow curry houses.
Now connoisseurs from Tokyo to London are scrambling to buy it.
According to Murray, the whisky's success highlights how the contours of the industry are shifting as new distilleries in locations as unlikely as Sweden, Iceland and Australia garner acclaim. "The days of the best stuff only hailing from the Highlands are long gone," he said.
The Times, London
Read more: Single malt whisky from India ranked among world's best
