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India sends its whisky to Scotland!
India launched its latest assault on the lucrative taste buds of Britain this week when a Bangalore distillery unveiled its own brand of single malt in Scotland, the heartland of whisky.
India launched its latest assault on the lucrative taste buds of Britain this week when a Bangalore distillery unveiled its own brand of single malt in Scotland, the heartland of whisky.
Amrut whisky is the brainchild of Rakshit Jagdale, 25, who stumbled on the idea of developing a sub-continental single malt while studying in Britain.
The aim is for it to be sold in every curry house in the country in a bid to capitalise on Britain's love affair with Indian food.
Speaking at the whisky's launch in Glasgow's Cafe India, Jagdale, who recently took over as executive director of Amrut, said that with more than 20,000 Indian restaurants, Britain represented an exciting market to exploit.
He said: "Amrut is the first Indian malt to meet the requirements of the European Union. Yes, we are competing against an industry which is 400 years old, but Indian malt has its own character and is different. If India can buy and consume a lot of Scotch, then we too can sell Indian spirits worldwide."
The 55-year-old Amrut Distilleries, whose products include brandy, rum, vodka and gin, reportedly has about five percent of India's domestic whisky market, much of it sold to India's vast army.
Jagdale said it has the capacity to produce 2.5 million cases every year at plants in Bangalore and Kerala. The barley comes from Punjab and Rajasthan, and water is brought by tanker from a well 24 km outside Bangalore.
The whisky is then matured in American oak barrels at the company's plant in Bangalore -- 3,000 ft above sea level -- but the intense humidity poses a problem as the European Union requires four years of maturation.
It will be distributed in Britain by Glasgow-based Premier Scotch Whisky, which is owned by Alastair Sinclair.
Sinclair first came across Amrut in the mid-1980s when he was working as a consultant to the spirits industry. Since then, he said, Amrut had invested a lot of money in the distillery, which had resulted in "a very fine malt whisky indeed".
Leonard Russell, managing director of Glengoyne Distillery, which has a foothold in the Gulf with the King Robert blend, said there might be a niche for Amrut in Indian restaurants, but he was sceptical that it would catch on in Scotland.
He said: "I am all for consumer choice and I applaud the Indian people for making relatively good malt whisky. I would venture that the market potential would be extremely small here as European consumers are not particularly interested in it."
India is a huge market for Scotland's whisky industry, but trade reports say it is effectively denied access due to a federally imposed duty burden of between 213 percent and 525 percent.
Latest figures show that Scotch whisky exports to India in 2002 were worth 9.2 million pounds and accounted for 681,108 cases.
Last year, Whyte & Mackay announced a tie-up with Indian brewer Shaw Wallace, and is beginning to build a distribution network for its Whyte & Mackay blend on the premise that the market will liberalise in 10 years.
