From ERP to single malt whisky, Amrut Distilleries' Ashok Chokalingam throws light on his trailblazing journey
ALSO READ: Premium push: Radico Khaitan sees sixfold rise in shareholder value in 5 years He reminisces about wearing out the tyres of his cars while driving across the UK with cases of Amrut’s single malt whisky; of revenues in 2007 amounting to just 20,000 pounds and of being given two years and a carte blanche to turn the division around. And finally, of the first signs of the tide turning in the company’s favour in 2010, with the championing of the Amrut Fusion by international whisky collectives such as the Malt Maniacs and its anointment as the world’s third best whisky by the influential whisky critic Jim Murray.
“The Fusion is our blue-eyed boy. It is solely the creation of NR Jagdale, our late chairman, and still remains the largest-selling Indian single malt.
Without it, you’d probably not have an Indian single malt category," says Chokalingam. The 49-year-old, who shifted base to India from the UK in the second half of the last decade and trained under Surrinder Kumar, Amrut’s former master distiller, has both contributed to, and created, expressions of his own.
The Amrut Kadhambam, he says, was inspired by the Kadamba sambar from Tamil Nadu, and the much-awarded Spectrum, which is produced in a barrel made out of wood from five different oaks, was the result of a brainwave he had late one night in Newcastle in 2012. “I remember I called up Rakshit at an unearthly hour and the next week I was at a cooperage in Spain, customising a barrel for the whisky." When I met him earlier this month at Amrut’s distillery on Mysore Road, an hour out of Bengaluru, Chokalingam was putting the finishing touches to a limited edition single malt that will be launched in June to celebrate the company’s 75th anniversary.
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