India's love of homegrown single malts shakes up Pernod, Diageo
Oak casks, once used to store bourbon and wine, are stacking up in a distillery near New Delhi, filled with ageing whisky as workers churn out almost 10,000 bottles a day of Indian single malt Indri, recently named the world's best whisky.
Sugarcane and mustard fields, not peat bogs, ring the distillery, where the two-year-old Indian brand's owner Piccadily is ramping up production and building a three-hole golf course to lure connoisseurs and tipplers in the whisky-loving nation.
As India comes into its own as a maker, not just consumer, of whisky, its single malts are reshaping the country's $33 billion spirits market.
Established global brands such as Glenlivet, made by France's Pernod Ricard, and Talisker by Britain's Diageo fight for shelf space with local rivals Indri, Amrut and Radico Khaitan's Rampur.
Unlike many Asian countries where beer dominates alcohol sales, India is predominantly a whisky-drinking nation. Global awards, increased affluence and a mass of drinkers trying new brands while cooped up during COVID-19 have rocked India's whisky landscape, industry executives and analysts say.
Aditya Prakash Rao for years drank foreign brands but now increasingly buys Indian malts for himself and for gifts during festive seasons.
Indian whisky gives Rao a sense of national pride — and goes well with Indian food — the lawyer said. «Nothing beats Indian malts in pairing with our kind of food, which is spicy.
I love it.»
Indri's $421 Diwali Collector's Edition won «Best in Show» at the Whiskies of the World Awards blind tasting in San Francisco in August, beating Scottish and U.S. rivals.
In response to the drink-India trend, global brands that have focussed on single malts aged in Scotland are looking to
