India’s beverages scene is experiencing a seismic transformation because of a bunch of enterprising and inventive young professionals who have been relentlessly pushing the envelope of creativity. The India Gin Story, far removed from the industrial spirits that would rule the market, takes me back to the early days of our wine industry, when it bubbled over with new ideas and inspired hope, and visibly transformed the Nashik-Baramati-Solapur agricultural belt of Maharashtra.
Sadly, the wine story did not become as big as we, back in the sunset years of the 1990s, had hoped it would, but gin is definitely the flavour of the season, and it is not likely to go out of fashion very soon. Surprising—our generation thought gin and tonic was too pucca sahib and colonial to be cool, but the Millennials and the younger Generation Z have embraced gin with the same passion with which Generation Y was in love with vodka. Yes, gin is the new Lord of the Drinks, and Indian gins are now a force to reckon with.
I was inspired to write about Indian gins because of the #IndianGinTrail Review, a virtual blind tasting of our own craft gins organised by Magandeep Singh and Gagan Sharma of the Delhi-based Institute of Wine and Beverage Studies. (Magandeep has been among the country’s most eloquent wine educators for more than 15 years, Gagan is his most accomplished acolyte, and their institute has produced some really fine beverage professionals.)
Each of the 82 invited participants—a mix of restaurant managers and other F&B professionals, media influencers, and representatives of gin brands—received seven identical 30ml glass bottles, each filled with one gin brand, identified only by a letter from the alphabet. When the 82 people met on Zoom on Wednesday, November 18, they prepared their own GNTs (the only tonic water allowed was Sepoy and Co., which, without doubt, is the most popular Indian brand today) and got down to the business of rating the six brands in contention.
The brands were Greater Than, Terai, Pumori, Hapusa, Stranger & Sons, and Samsara—Magandeep said India has four to five more homegrown craft brands, which will be added during the virtual tastings planned in the months ahead. I was aware of Greater Than, the first Indian craft gin rolled out in 2017 from Goa, and Hapusa, named after the Sanskrit word for juniper, which is found abundantly in the Himalayas, because they are the creations of Anand Virmani and my dear friend Vaibhav Singh, whom we know better as the guys behind the immensely popular ‘wine and coffee bar’ Perch.
The others equally were revelations for me. Terai, although inspired by the Himalayan foothills, is produced in Behror, Rajasthan, not far from Delhi, by an old producer of mass liquor brands; Pumori, named after a Nepalese mountain range, is made in Goa in really small quantities; Stranger & Sons, also produced in Goa, comes from the same company that created India’s first distilled cocktail—Perry Road Peru (gin, pink guavas known locally as peru, and red chilli flakes to rim the glass) —for The Bombay Canteen; and Samsara, a London Dry-style gin produced in gin in collaboration with the Ratan Tata-backed Bombay Hemp Co.
Gins stand apart because of the botanicals that go into making them. Although five of the six Indian craft gin brands are made in Goa, the botanicals—from Alphonso mango to black pepper, from gondhoraj lemon to Nagpur orange, from coriander seeds to cassia bark, from hemp seeds to rose petals—robustly express the diversity and depth of Indian agriculture. Macedonia is the popular source of juniper, but our gin makers have discovered Himalayan sources. From the Malabar and Konkan coasts to the banks of the Hooghly and the monsoon forests of Tamil Nadu, India has a treasure trove of botanicals to offer.
Based on feedback received from 52 participants, Hapusa topped the pecking order with 7.5/10, followed very closely by Stranger & Sons (7.2), Greater Than and Terai (7.1 each). Pumori and Samsara notched up 6.8 and 6.5 respectively. Our oldest craft gin is just three years old, and more brands are entering the fray, so it may be too early to start ranking them. The #IndianGinTrail, though, was a worthwhile initiative and great way to flag off the Great Indian Gin Revolution.