Heritage in a bottle: How Indian liquor startups are distilling tradition into premium craft

FLIPPING THROUGH Lufthansa’s magazine on a flight across Europe in 2014, Nitin Vishwas saw an article about London’s first meadery in 500 years. Intrigued, he contacted his childhood friend Rohan Rehani. Both are fans of The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, tales based on mythology and history in which mead is mentioned often.

Was someone making mead again? Mead, the drink made from fermented honey, finds mention in Celtic, Chinese and Greek history. Vishwas and Rehani couldn’t find any mead in nearby wine shops. “If we can’t find it,” said Rohan, “why not make it?”

They experimented with honey and recipes at home. Getting the right honey was tough, and they became beekeepers.

Mead has a slightly higher alcohol by volume (ABV) of 5-20% than beer (4-7%) but less than whisky, vodka and rum (all around 40%). Going commercial meant paying excise. Finally, Maharashtra put mead in the wine category in 2017. And Moonshine Meadery was born.

Getting new highs

India’s craft liquor makers must woo consumers hooked to foreign-origin drinks such as beer, gin, rum, vodka and whisky. While every region has some intoxicating brew made locally, organised players are upscaling old favourites such as Goa’s cashew apples drink feni or creating Indian versions of foreign liquors such as tequila.

Only states can tax liquor and don’t have to share the revenues, so it is a major revenue stream. The three tax categories are imported liquor, such as whisky, beer, rum and vodka; locally made varieties, classified as IMFL or Indian-made foreign liquor; and country liquor. Country liquor is the cheapest way to get intoxicated but is seen as downmarket, though volumes have attracted organised distillers.

Craft liquor is, by definition, made in small batches using artisanal techniques. Craft distillers experiment with indigenous grains, ageing methods, and unique infusions to create distinct profiles.

Heritage craft spirits accounted for 57-87 million cases annually in India’s billion-case alcohol market, valued at ₹3.2 lakh crore in FY23. The alcohol market is expected to grow to slightly less than one and a half billion cases in FY25.

Across the world, brands such as Balcones in Texas, Kavalan in Taiwan, and Stauning in Denmark have innovated with whisky-making. In India, multinational Diageo has crafted Godawan, a single malt based on arid Rajasthan’s barley. Indian major Radico Khaitan has revived its old name to craft Rampur, the priciest single-malt from India.

In the craft category, heritage liquors such as mahua and feni are going places, but how are they carving out success stories?

Shaken, not stirred: Feni’s rise

India’s rising per capita disposable income, at ₹2.6 lakh, according to the World Economic Outlook (October 2024), drives the appetite for premium alcohol. Premium goes beyond just taste: It could be how the bottle looks in your home bar.

Who would have thought that just packaging could take feni places? The brother-sister duo Yash Sawardekar and Tulika Sawardekar did just that when they got their Goenchi feni to stand out. The brand won the 2023 Kyoorius Blue and Big Elephant awards for design, beating multinational Diageo’s Godawan and homegrown gin Tamras.

“It was a big moment for feni to be able to clinch an award like this, beating Western spirits in the luxury category when no one believed feni was luxury,” says Sawardekar, co-founder of Goenchi.

The bottle resembles the iconic Garrafão — large, rounded glass vessels with narrow necks that the Portuguese colonialists brought to Goa.

Feni, distilled from cashew apples or coconut flowers, was long relegated to back-alley bars. But people like Sawardekar are positioning it as a high-end spirit. Sawardekar says that what worked for Goenchi was not just its “packaging, but the brand’s positioning.” Rather than throwing money into marketing, Goenchi incentivises retailers and bars. The brother-sister duo says this approach supports feni, which still faces the ‘country liquor’ stigma. Goenchi feni found life in cocktails, for which it hangs out in premium bars.

Macleigh Rey Fernandes of Boilermaker, Goa, says, “When we serve any of our first-timers a cocktail made out of feni without telling them that it contains feni, most react saying, ‘Holy s**t! This has feni in it?” That is when the customer could decide to try a feni cocktail again, says Fernandes.

“Marketing is where most brands spend most of their money. But we’ve not done [that]. We’ve always kept a very conservative marketing model. We wanted to make sure we work on a pyaar mohabbat [love] basis. So, we work on promoting our brands mostly through bars,” Sawardekar says.

Goa’s government secured a GI tag for its cashew feni in 2009, which has helped distillers. The GI tag for cashew feni is the first for any Indian alcohol. It has applied for coconut feni to get the GI tag.

Hansel Vaz, secretary of the All Goans Feni Distillers Association, says Goa has 3,000 feni distillers, with an unorganised market of 9 million cases and an organised market of 4 million cases. But only 25 are serious feni distillers, says Vaz. His Cazulo brand owns eight of them.

Vaz says Cazulo’s sales were powered by its Canadian launch where it was received warmly at $40 a bottle when the usual price was $5.

“You realise that feni is not an Indian story. It’s an international story where people are looking for something exotic, something original,” Vaz says.

The mezcal and tequila wave

Combine tequila, triple sec, and lime juice in a cocktail shaker. Add ice, shake, strain it into a salt-rimmed cocktail glass and garnish with a lime wheel, and your classic margarita is ready.

Now, instead of tequila, which has a GI tag, use the nectar of Indian agave, use the descendants of the Mexican agave plant that the British brought to India to fence off railway tracks. Follow the usual drill, and you have a fresher and boozier version of the margarita.

This is what a group of girl pals of an academician at the IITs started drinking. The academician wrote a letter of thanks to Desmond Nazareth, founder of Agave India Industries.

Nazareth says his success is an example of why craft spirits are a hit in a crowded IMFL market. DesmondJi, his artisanal brand, is manufactured at India’s first official craft distillery. He also makes DJ Mahua.

Diageo’s chief innovation officer, Vikram Damodaran, says craft spirits remain hyper-local in adoption, but consumers are looking for authentic, land-connected beverages. This shift began over a decade ago with microbreweries.

Indian agave-based spirits are riding the global popularity of tequila.

Mezcal is a broader term for any agave-based drink, while tequila is made from a specific Blue Weber Agave.

“Everybody understands tequila is made using agave. [Consumers] know it belongs to the same family, and therefore, the mental attitude of the consumer wanting to know what Indian agave tastes like is leading to the popularity of agave spirits,” says Damodaran.

Diageo recently invested in Maya Pistola Agavepura, an Indian agave brand, to catch the tequilisation wave.

Maya Pistola is also exporting. “We’re currently exporting to the US, Thailand and Singapore. It’s been extremely well received,” says Rakshay Dhariwal, its founder and MD.

For Pistola, the expansion strategy is more than just tapping the tequila drinkers.

“We have to do things a little outside the box, which also works well for our brand because this is an agave spirit coming out of India,” Dhariwal says.

Taking mahua to the cities of Europe is MAH Spirits, based out of France and co-founded by a former journalist, Rahul Srivastava. Mahua is also planning to ride the same mezcal wave. He gets mahua flowers from India and makes the drink in France.

At the premium end is South Seas Distilleries & Breweries, a bulk whisky exporter, that got into the mahua business with Six Brothers Mahura in October 2024.

Substituting beers and Breezers

Moonshine found that many consumers switched from beer to mead because it was as carbonated as beer but did not make them feel bloated; mead had the same ABV and fizz but no artificial flavours or colours.

Moonshine’s Rehani says, “The reason they are drinking mead is because… you want to drink better. Whether it’s because the drink is gluten-free, or all-natural, or sustainable… and I think that’s where we fit in perfectly.” Moonshine saw it also needed surrogate brands and allied businesses. Honey consumption is just 10 gm per person annually, and Moonshine decided to sell branded honey. Honey fetches nearly 10% of Moonshine’s revenues.

Rehani says they focus on increasing brand awareness by holding more events, stock sponsorships, and maybe even creating their intellectual property or IP.

Will the buzz last?

Chef Manu Chandra, owner of Lupa, a European-themed restaurant in Bengaluru, says, “In liquor, very rarely do you see a spirit come on its own without having billions of dollars to back up marketing.”

But Chandra is all for craft liquor. “If we have the capability, why shouldn’t we make these?”

Alok Gupta, MD, Allied Blenders & Distillers, says that if India wants to export spirits, “the Indian spirits industry needs to strengthen its production capabilities, focus on branding and global marketing, navigate regulatory hurdles, and establish strong distribution channels in international markets.”

What’s the road ahead for these startups in artisanal alcohol? They need to build brands more aggressively, while the states could help by creating less arbitrary excise slabs. More consumers need to add mahua, mead, and tequila to their usual beer, rum and whisky repertoire.