Old Monk, flavouring, and the question of what makes your rum a rum | Industry News

Mohan Rocky Springwater, the makers of Old Monk, told the court that it will blank out the line ‘7 years blend’ from products. But the story goes beyond Old Monk.

While the FSSAI’s action is about labelling, it is interesting to note how artificial flavouring and a lesser percentage of matured rum or whisky are allowed under Indian standards. This means that the character of a drink need not come entirely from the raw material, distillation and years of maturation, which makes it markedly different from the alcoholic beverages in European Union countries.

So, what actually happens inside the bottle of your favourite alcoholic beverage before it reaches your glass?

Where does the character of spirits come from?

To understand what is inside the bottle, let’s first understand how spirits traditionally get their character.

Whisky traditionally starts with grain. The grain is mashed to convert its starch into sugars, which yeast then ferments into alcohol. This liquid is distilled to produce the spirit. The way the spirit is distilled and where the distiller makes the cuts determines how much of the compounds that contribute flavour and aroma remain in the spirit. That spirit can then go into wooden casks for maturation, where it picks up colour and develops further aroma and flavour.

Rum broadly follows the same journey, except that it begins with sugarcane or sugarcane-derived materials such as molasses or sugarcane juice.

But there is another, much quicker route to the bottle: through extra neutral alcohol, or ENA.

Aruna Urs, founder of Huli Spirits, a premium craft rum made from jaggery, told Business Standard that ENA can be produced by one distillery and used by another as the alcoholic base for a range of beverages.

“Sugar factories can make ENA from molasses. Primary grain distilleries can make ENA from grains. These distilleries sell it to other distilleries, which can then use it as the alcoholic base for different products. The final product can then acquire its character through different combinations of spirit, blending, maturation, permitted colouring and, where allowed, flavouring,” he said.

But that does not mean all Indian rum or whisky is made this way. Urs said premium Indian single malts, grain whiskies and conventionally distilled and matured rums can follow very different production processes which also includes years of ageing.

Why is ENA attractive to alcohol manufacturers?

Ageing alcohol means tying up capital for years. A manufacturer has to produce or buy the spirit, fill it into barrels, store those barrels in warehouses and maintain them while waiting for the product to mature. And all that time, some of the alcohol is disappearing.

This problem is particularly acute in India’s climate. Urs said Indian weather makes ageing much more aggressive: “Indian weather is completely different from Western geographies. The loss, or what we call the ‘angel’s share’, is very high when you age spirits in barrels here. Ageing is also much more aggressive because of the high humidity and high temperature.”

At Huli, he said, the distillate enters 200-litre ex-bourbon barrels at around 61-62 per cent alcohol by volume., “During the first year, if we take care of the barrels during summer, for example, by putting wet jute bags around them and continuously wetting them, our loss is around 10–11 per cent,” he said.

Over three years, the cumulative loss can be substantial. “By the third year, if the weather is kind, you may end up with around 140–150 litres,” he added.

In hot conditions, Urs said the annual loss can be higher.  “If somebody puts a barrel in January and opens it in December, the loss could be around 14–15 per cent,” he said.

Then there are significant licensing costs. “When you are manufacturing excisable goods such as alcohol, which is a state subject, you operate under state licences and pay licence fees,” Urs said.

State excise rules can also require manufacturers to account for losses beyond permitted levels. The exact permissible loss and its tax treatment vary across jurisdictions.

In a market where the consumer is highly price-sensitive, every litre lost to evaporation has an economic cost, Urs said.

That is where ENA becomes attractive. “So, commercially, it makes sense to make the product quickly using ENA that can reduce the production cycle to around 12-18 days instead of holding spirit in barrels for years,” Urs said.

Can flavouring really replace years inside a barrel?

Rakshit N Jagdale, managing director of single malt whisky maker Amrut Distilleries, said much of a spirit’s character begins developing even before it reaches the barrel.

“In whisky production, distillers separate the distillate into heads, hearts and tails. The hearts are retained because they contain the desirable characteristics of the spirit, while the heads and tails contain higher concentrations of compounds that can produce undesirable flavours when present in excessive quantities,” he explained.

The objective is not to remove all character. It is to retain the character the distiller wants.

Then comes the barrel. “Once the spirit enters the barrel, this is where the whisky develops its character. The wood imparts colour, flavour and aroma to the spirit,” he said.

Amrut has around 22,000 casks, Jagdale said, including ex-bourbon, Madeira, ex-Oloroso sherry and PX Sherry casks. The choice of cask itself, therefore, becomes part of the recipe.

But modern flavour technology offers another way of creating some of those characteristics. “There are many flavour houses today that can create very sophisticated flavour profiles. So, if you cannot age the spirit in a barrel, you can use what the industry calls ‘nature-identical flavours’ to build character,” Urs said.

There is also a significant difference in cost. “Natural flavours are extremely expensive. Nature-identical flavours are cheaper,” Urs added.

This is one of the central questions thrown up by the Old Monk dispute. FSSAI’s position is that a product cannot simply use rum flavouring to create the defining character of rum and then be sold as rum. The regulator has said such a product should instead be identified as a flavoured product.

Urs believes the dispute could eventually force the market to draw clearer distinctions.

“I think there will be a new category as a result of FSSAI’s action… something like flavoured rum, flavoured whisky or rum-flavoured spirit,” he said.

But this raises another question. If neutral spirit is so different from traditionally distilled and matured rum or whisky, why is it allowed in India in the first place?

Why India’s rules allow a cheaper route

As stated earlier, Indian government’s regulations themselves allow neutral agricultural spirit to be used in these categories. FSSAI defines rum as a distillate from fermented sugarcane juice, molasses or another sugarcane product. But the regulations also allow rum to be prepared from neutral, rectified or distilled spirit of agricultural origin. The finished product must possess the characteristic taste and aroma associated with rum.

Whisky has an even broader definition. FSSAI allows whisky to be made from fermented malted cereal extracts, neutral grain spirit, rectified grain spirit, neutral agricultural spirit or mixtures of these.

For blended malt or blended grain whisky, the rules allow a mixture containing at least 2 per cent barley malt or grain whisky with neutral or rectified spirit.

Compare that with the European Union (EU), and the difference becomes stark. Under EU rules, whisky must be made from fermented cereal mash, distilled below 94.8 per cent alcohol so that the distillate retains aroma and taste from the raw materials, and matured for at least three years in wooden casks of no more than 700 litres. It cannot be flavoured or contain added alcohol.

EU rules for rum similarly require the spirit to retain the characteristics of rum after distillation. Added alcohol is not permitted, and rum cannot be flavoured.

So there is no single global definition of rum or whisky. But India’s framework leaves considerably more room for neutral agricultural spirit than the European system.

There is also a historical reason for this. Jagdale pointed out that India is a major sugar producer, which means molasses—a byproduct of sugar manufacturing—has traditionally been available in large quantities for alcohol production.

“Once sugarcane is processed and sugar is crystallised, molasses remains as a byproduct. Since molasses is available in abundance and has limited applications in other agricultural processes, it has traditionally been used as a primary raw material for producing certain categories of whisky,” he said.

Then there is the market demand. India has a huge mass-market spirits segment where price remains a major consideration. Premiumisation may be growing, but expensive aged spirits still make up a much smaller part of the market.

Urs puts it bluntly: “The shortcut way of making rum and whisky is deeply entrenched in India, and there is a whole ecosystem built around it. It is extremely difficult to move the industry away from that.”

But does any of this actually matter once the drink is poured into a glass, and is ENA unsafe?

Is the ENA unsafe?

The use of ENA is not automatically a sign of a bad or unsafe product. However, when it comes to taste, Urs said consumers can notice the difference.

“The mouthfeel itself is very different. Some molasses-based spirits, particularly heavily fermented and lightly distilled ones, have a heavier body and can have very fruity aromas,” he said.

The difference becomes more visible when you compare the price of a 750-ml bottle. According to Urs, at around ₹500, a mass-market spirit has to be made with a very different cost structure from one selling for ₹1,500 or ₹4,000.

A more expensive bottle may carry the cost of better raw materials, a more characterful distillate, longer maturation, expensive casks, greater evaporation losses and capital tied up in inventory for years. A cheaper bottle has less room to absorb those costs, making neutral spirit, blending, and faster production economically attractive.

And then there is perhaps the most recognisable claim on any bottle of aged alcohol: the number of years printed on its label.

What does ‘7 years old’ on a bottle actually mean?

‘Seven years old’ sounds simple enough. But when it comes to a blend, the age statement refers to the youngest spirit in the bottle.

In the Old Monk case, the FSSAI says matured rum made up less than 5 per cent of the product, while most of it was unmatured neutral spirit, making the claim misleading under its interpretation of the rules.

But age itself can be deceptive in India’s warmer climate. Jagdale said whisky can mature faster in India’s warmer climate than in Scotland because heat speeds up the interaction between the spirit and the wood.

“A longer age statement does not necessarily mean that you are getting a higher-quality whisky,” he said. “What matters is how the spirit was distilled and how the barrels are stored and managed.”

So, age is part of the story, not the whole story.

How does a consumer know what he or she is actually drinking?

According to Urs, the answer is simple: read the label.

“Look at the ingredients. Companies are mostly truthful about the ingredients. If the label says extra neutral alcohol, that indicates that the product is based on neutral spirit,” he said.

The label can tell you where the alcohol came from. It cannot, on its own, tell you how much character came from the raw material, the still, the barrel or the blender. The Old Monk dispute is ultimately forcing the Indian spirits industry to confront that distinction more openly.