Tasted #705: Indri Agneya Single Malt Indian Whisky

It's hard to believe it's been 11 years this year, but in 2015 I visited Amrut Distillery for what was (still, to this day) the most in-depth distillery tour I've ever taken. Over many hours I got an incredibly in-depth look into every facet of Amrut's production, directly from the man responsible for making "Indian Single Malt" a thing, Surrinder Kumar.

In 2019 Surrinder however moved to Piccadily Agro Industries Limited, and subsequently launched what is now India's #1 selling single malt, Indri. We've featured Indri a few times on the blog, praising both their "Trini" in 2022 and Diwali Collector's Edition & Founder's Reserve last year. When Piccadily reached out offering a bottle of their latest "Agneya", matured in a mix of ex-Sherry and ex-Bourbon casks, I wasn't about to say no!

  

Derived from the Sanskrit word meaning “belonging to fire", Agneya is said to be a lightly-peated dram, non-chill filtered and with no added colour.

So without further ado...

Indria "Agneya" (46% ABV, Single Malt, NAS, Haryana, India, $104.99AUD, £46.25)
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Colour: Golden copper

Nose: Dried fig, raisins and a big hit of ginger. There are subtle hints of smoke (woodfired / BBQ smoke), along with some oak, spice and a little varnish. Quite a bit going on!

Palate: Stays true to the nose, with more chocolate, a little floral hint, some banana, woodsmoke & burnt orange peel

Finish: Long, with residual subtle woodfire smoke, salted chocolate and soft warming spices.

Rating (on my very non-scientific scale): 90/100 (Martin). Another great dram from Indri.

Cheers,

Martin.

Indri Single Malt Indian Whisky - Trini [Tasted #613]

In the 3rd century BC - trade between India and other parts of the world was blooming. At that time, Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the ancient Indian Empire build a trade route that would connect Central Asia (all the way to Greece) to important trade centres in India. Many years later, the British Empire considerably rebuilt the road between 1833 and 1860 and aptly named this route the Grant Trunk Road or now also referred to as GT Road. 

Over the centuries, the GT road acted as one of the major trade routes in the region and the road is still very much used in the present-day Indian subcontinent for transportation. This route has been the gateway to the Indian sub-continent and has seen Traders, Merchants, Armies come and go, making it a prime region of cultural confluence. 

So what's this got to do with whisky you ask? Fast forward to 1995 and a distillery was built just off this iconic trade route. Piccadily, an Indian hospitality and entertainment group built a sugar mill and distillery off the GT road, in a small village known as Indri in the Haryana region. What would not be known at the time was that Indri would eventually feature on the global scale as one of India's award-winning whiskies. Since then, Piccadily has become the largest independent manufacturer and seller of malt spirits in India. 

The Haryana region is naturally abundant in water and it's also known as the 'Green Bowl of India.' Landlocked between mountain peaks that form part of the Himalayas range, the region, its surroundings and history would soon form part of the Indri single malt whisky story. 

The distillery in Indri, Haryana has six copper pot stills, three being wash stills and the other three being spirit stills. The production capacity is rated at around 4 million litres annually. The preparation of American imported oak barrels is also done on-site by the coopers at the distillery who would toast, char and repair the barrels on-site.

The development of the Indri single malt whisky has primarily been driven by Master Blender, Surrinder Kumar who has been developing malts from the distillery since 2004. The Indri Single Malt Whisky, in particular, has won numerous awards and also took gold at this year's International Spirits Challenge (ISC) overtaking the likes of Paul John and Rampur Whiskies. The former, I still love to this day; I fondly remember my first time, tasting the Paul John Oloroso when it first launched.

So what do I think of the Indri Single Malt Whisky, here are my thoughts.

Indri Single Malt Whisky - Trini; The Three Wood (46% ABV, NAS, Indri, Haryana, India, A$79.99 

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While there is an inherent oakiness throughout, the layers of flavours on the nose and the palate make this a particularly interesting whisky. It is fruity, and light and can be had with or without a drop of water.

Nose: Summer fruits, loads of raspberries and blackberries, pineapple lollies and a dollop of creamy vanilla ice cream layered with a drizzle of honey.

Palate: Light, to begin with, the berry notes come through initially before a layer of gentle spice that follows. There is an undertone of oakiness that is carried throughout. The spices are mixed with citrus notes, orange zest, and some white pepper. 

Finish: The finish is medium and there are the tannin and the oak notes that remain along with some sour pineapple juice that lingers.

Rating: 91/100 (Hendy) 

Thanks to Madhu Kanna of Piccadily for sending us a bottle of Indri Single Malt Whisky to check out. 

Pairing "World Whiskies" with Indian cuisine at McSorley's Hong Kong

With the immense popularity growth of whisky in Hong Kong in recent years, it's no surprise to see an increase in both dedicated whisky bars (when we started covering the Asia scene for example, there was no Club Qing or Ginger - now two of HK's best whisky bars), as well as existing bars increasing their focus on whisky.

Much loved McSorley's Ale House fall into the latter camp, with their new SoHo location in Staunton St, Central. The traditional Irish pub is increasing their focus on whisky (all whisk(e)y, not just Irish), and plans to do so with a regular calendar of events.

We went along to a recent event - a tasting of 4 "world whiskies" (which actually ended up being 7), paired with four Indian dishes. Indian cuisine may not seem like the most obvious to pair with whisky, but we applaud the bar's bravery in exploring this front (and as we discovered, it actually worked well). 

Whisky Ambassador Jessica Kwok was our host for the night, kicking things off with a brief introduction into the new whisky nights concept at McSorley's, as we all enjoyed the welcome cocktail - a mixture of Tullamore D.E.W, ginger syrup, soda and bitters. Much like the laid-back, relaxed nature of a traditional Irish pub, McSorley's SoHo is looking to keep their whisky nights informal and fun, but with a sizeable list of quality whiskies.

Jessica explained that given the group is already well-known for their Indian menus, they figured why not try to pair that with their new whisky aspirations...and without further ado, we jumped into the first pairing - Bulleit Rye with vegetable samosa. I've always enjoyed Bulleit Rye, but with a 95% rye mashbill, there's no denying it's a spicy whisky. Pairing that with vege samosas resulted in, well, a spicy pairing. A tasty one though.

Next up was Teeling Single Grain paired with Butter Chicken. This worked quite well too, with the whisky making the chicken seem sweeter, and the sauce more perfurmed.

Of course, it wouldn't have seemed right if there was no Indian whisky, and so our third course saw Amrut Single Malt (see our distillery tour here) paired with fish Makani. This was by no means a bad pairing, but neither the whisky nor the dish really seemed to elevate or substantially alter the notes in the other.

For a brief interlude before our final pairing, Jessica broke out her personal bottle of Breckenridge Bourbon, a young whiskey from the Rocky Mountains. Whilst I was sceptical at first (having tasted a lot of young, generic Bourbon over the years), I was pleasantly surprised with this - a delicious Bourbon with notes of toffee, oak, vanilla cream and red apples.

Back to the food, and our last pairing - Famous Grouse "Smoky Black" paired with tandoori chicken. Jessica explained that they'd tried this dish with various Laphroaigs and Bowmores, but found the toned-down, subtle smoke in the Famous Grouse worked best as a pairing, and to be fair, it did work well, with the charred smoke of the chicken and the subtle smoke of the blend mixing nicely, and creating what I thought was the best pairing of the night.

Indian may not seem like the natural choice when looking for food to pair with whisky, but in this case, it was a fun and interesting experiment that produced some enjoyable combinations. Well done to McSorley's, and we're looking forward to their future whisky events (including one soon with The Lost Distillery Company).

Cheers,

Martin.

Distillery Tour #6: Amrut Distilleries (Bangalore, India) (Tasted #217)

If you were to say our Distillery Tour posts had a theme, it would surely have to be "Not Scottish" (don't worry, those tours have happened, they were awesome, and the posts will be up soon). So far we've covered distillery visits in Melbourne, Sydney, Japan (twice), and Taiwan, and now it's India's  turn.

This tour was originally planned for 2013, but after having to cancel a work trip to Bangalore for personal reasons, it wasn't until 2015 that another chance came up. I needed to make a quick Mon-Fri trip to Bangalore for work, and took the opportunity to ask Amrut Distilleries if I'd be able to take a look around the distillery on the Saturday. Thankfully they were more than happy to have me, and so the plan was set.

Saturday rolls around, and we (myself and a colleague) make the journey out to South West Bangalore (25km, a little over an hour) in a hotel car. We weren't quite sure what to expect, but we did learn that our tour would be conducted by Master Distiller Surrinder Kumar, who had kindly come in on his day off to show us around!

Surrinder, with a whopping 29 years of experience under his belt, started by talking us through the fascinating story of how Amrut Single Malt came to be, and how even though it makes up an incredibly small percentage of their total output (details further on), it's put them on the global map.

To most whisky drinkers, Amrut was unheard-of until their single malt started gaining a global following in the late 2000's. The company however has been actually been making spirit since 1948 (initially "IMFL", or "Indian-made Foreign Liquor" distilled from molasses), and was producing Indian "whisky" a long time before the single malt came along. In fact, an excess of malt whisky (previously used for blending popular local Indian blended "whiskies"), which the distillery noted was of significantly higher quality than most other Indian whiskies, was one of the catalysts for the launch of Amrut Single Malt.

3rd generation owner and son of current Chairman, Rakshit Jagdale (studying his MBA at the time in England) was asked to investigate launching a single malt product outside India, starting with the UK. The product was already there - they just needed to get it into the public's conscious. Research showed that the public perceived it to be similar in style to a 15-18yr old Speysider, and so a plan was drawn up to launch it in the UK - initially in Indian restaurants, taking the same approach as Indian beers like Kingfisher and Cobra.

After some time, volumes weren't picking up and the company considered ending the project, but (taking a renewed spirit of perseverance from the Gahdhi statue in London), Rakshit forged on, seeking importers for each country and...well the rest is history, with Amrut currently available in 22 countries (although still very limited in India).

I mentioned Amrut Single Malt being an "incredibly small percentage" of Amrut's total production. How small? Well, there are approximately 14,000 x 4.5L cases of Amrut Single Malt produced each year (a total of 63,000L), compared to 200,000 x 9L cases produced of all other products.....per month! In other words - 21,600,000L, making the single malt about 0.2% of total production. A very successful 0.2%, you'd have to say!

Unsurprisingly, Amrut can't keep up with worldwide demand for that 63,000L, and are currently increasing warehousing from their current 6 warehouses. They're also experimenting with temperature-controlled warehouses, like some Bourbon distilleries in the US, but for now it remains an experimentation only.

Just before Surrinder took us out to tour the operations, he mentioned that a new product was on the horizon - "Greedy Angel's Chairman's Reserve", at an incredible 10 years old ("incredible" considering the distillery experiences 10-12% Angels' share each year). That product has since been released (and likely sold out) - and comes with a 50mL cask-strength sample of the whisky at 71% ABV.

By this stage we'd spent a good 90 minutes with the clearly passionate Surrinder, and our tour was no less comprehensive, taking another 90 minutes and showing us into all facets of the operation, which employs hundreds of staff from Bangalore.

Production of all products occurs via two 7.5hr shifts each day, with the single malt being distilled on a Monday. Temperature controlled fermentation takes 1 week (kept under 30degC), and whilst we didn't get to taste the wash (at 6.5-7% ABV), we did taste the new make (73% ABV off the still, 63% ABV into the cask), which was fruity, oily, rich, subtly peaty (on the palate, not the nose) and incredibly smooth.

We got to talking about distillery visits, and Surrinder mentioned a visit to a popular Lowland distillery (he didn't mention it by name, but we figured out it was Auchentoshan) where he noted some tips for triple distillation. Despite only having two stills (that's them above), Surrinder experimented with triple-distilled Amrut about 3 years ago, and mentioned that it was currently ageing away in the underground "cellar" - possibly a year or two away from release...

...which of course, was my queue to try my luck, and ask if I could taste it. Before I knew it, Surrinder was asking one of the production managers to fetch a sample from the "cellar", and a few minutes later, this vibrant orange sample appeared:

Triple Distilled Amrut (name not yet known) (64% ABV, ~3yo, Karnataka, India, not yet available)
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Colour: Intensely vibrant orange.
Nose: Light, citrusy. Lemon oil. Some esthers and some caramel chews.
Palate: Light, zesty. Lemon cheese cake. Young and hot, but very drinkable. In another 12-18 months I imagine it will be incredible.
Finish: Very long, lots of caramel chews.
Rating (on my very non-scientific scale): 91/100. Can't wait to see how this turns out.

Exciting stuff. After a look at the malt mill, the delivery setup (which receives 16-17 trucks per day) and the fermentation tanks, it was time to venture into one of the warehouses.

Maturation Warehouse 1 (just next to the still room) is home to casks racked 5 high, including a few weird and wonderful whiskies which have featured in recent and soon-to-be-released (we hope) whiskies. Chief amongst these was this cask of Amrut "Naarangi", which saw Amrut age sherry infused with orange peels in the cask for 3 years, before emptying it, then ageing an already 3 year old sherry-matured Amrut for another 3 years in said cask. The resulting whisky is said to have some subtle, but noticeable orange notes, without being considered a "flavoured" whisky.

Next, it was off to the bottling and packaging floors, where I saw whiskies the likes of which I'd never seen before. How so? Take a look for yourself...

That's right - Tetra-pak "whisky"! This is an example of the local blended "whisky" Amrut produces for the local market, and sells for mere cents. The packaging line for these products runs 24 hours a day - such is the popularity of these throughout India.

Having seen the production, ageing and packaging facilities, it was time to visit Surrinder's "lab", with a variety of International and local whiskies, and several single cask samples (Amrut do a great private cask program, which was taken up by Dram Full with the recent Dram Full Amrut bottling - now sold out).

Amrut aren't allowed to sell any bottles from the distillery, but we were kindly gifted a 50mL mini each - continuing my tradition of collecting miniatures from distilleries I've visited.

..and with that, it was time to draw the tour to a close, and head back to the city, then the airport, then back to HK. An extremely informative and enjoyable day, and a tour I'm very glad I (finally) got to take.

A huge thanks must go to Surrinder, Ashok and Pramod for making this tour happen - especially Surrinder for spending so much time with us on his day off. If you ever find yourself in Bangalore and have some spare time, I can highly recommend booking a tour of this fascinating distillery.

Cheers,
Martin.

Tasted #35: Seagram Blender's Pride Reserve Collction (#101drams)

In my job I work closely with a team in India - really just as an extension of our local team in Australia. We talk daily, catch up socially (via e-mail / phone) and celebrate milestones and birthdays. On my birthday last year, the team sent me a Happy Birthday e-mail saying they'd pour a "Blender's Pride" for me over in India. I hadn't heard of it before (being only familiar with the excellent Amrut when it comes to Indian whisky), but shortly after when I pulled together my #101drams list, I knew it had to feature.

Luckily on a recent trip, one of my team members was kind enough to bring a bottle over - of the "Reserve Collection", which is the premium version of Blender's Pride. Distributed by Pernod Ricard in India, Seagram Blender's Pride is a blend of "imported Scotch malts" and "select Indian grain spirits". No word on which Scottish malts are included.

I was warned that I "may not like it" and "it's not as good as Amrut" (which I fully expected, ha), but regardless, I was keen to give it a go.

Seagram Blender's Pride Reserve Collection (42.8% ABV, NAS blend, India)
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Nose: Light, but with strong esthers. Very fruity - peaches, cherries. Not overly smooth.

Palate: Nothing like the nose at all. Quite smooth, and none of the fruit that the nose gave off. The grain influence is there, and it's clearly young. Shortbread, rice cakes, but overall very light on the palate. It's not bad, there's just not a whole lot going on.

Finish: Extremely short - mostly gone after a few seconds. A grain-influenced finish with hints of rice cakes at the end.

Rating (on my very non-scientific scale): 80/100. Look, I didn't expect this to be a knockout, but I'll be honest and say it is better than I expected. As far as cheaper blends go (it sells for around $15AUD/bottle), it's very drinkable and I'd say would give JW Red a run for its money. Then again, Steph tried it without knowing what it was, and her only comment was "There's no pride in that!!" 

Cheers,
 - Martin.