Amrut Distilleries, the 70-year-old brand of Indian distilled beverages, is still a family business started by JN Radhakrishna Rao Jagdale. And today, the moment of reckoning for Thrivikram Nikam, Executive Director of Amrut, was to see fans getting tattooed with the brand’s name. “I am grateful to our patrons for their love and affection,” he begins.
Positioned as a luxury product today, the brand started out as a drink for the country’s economic segment in 1948, says Nikam, who is also Jagdale's son-in-law. It began by supplying its ‘Silver Cup Brandy’ and ‘Amrut Rum’ to local markets of Karnataka and military quarters. By the 1980s, the company supplied a mere 30,000 cases per year, with one case equivalent to nine litres. Today, the brand has grown multifold as it supplies an average of 48 lakh cases on an annual basis, as per company estimates.
The brand has come a long way since 2004 when it first launched its Indian single malt whisky in the international market. At the time, when Neelakanta was contemplating the next step in his business, he invoked a Gandhian reference that inspired him to push forward. “Looking at Gandhiji, it came to me, our entire history would have been different if he, too, had gone back on what he had resolved to do,” he said in an interview with Firstpost in 2017.
In 2010, when Amrut Fusion ranked third among the world’s finest whiskys, as per whisky connoisseur Jim Murray’s list, the brand was then put on the map. Speaking about a few tricks of the trade that quite literally come from thinking ‘outside the box’, Nikam says, “Whisky, made from any grain but popularly from barley, is generally matured in a particular type of barrel. Yet, for our brands like Spectrum and Narangi, we decided to do things a little different. We took staves from different kinds of barrels like Portuguese barrels, Spanish barrels, and European barrels to make one single barrel. That is what gives our whisky its unique flavouring.”
What keeps the distilleries of Bengaluru at work, aside from the legacy of its founder, is the inventiveness of its team. When Amrut launched its ‘Two Indies’ rum, a union of India and West Indies, it wanted to add a natural element. “Majority of the flavours of rum are artificial and so we added jaggery to make an all natural flavour,” Nikam states.
Today, with over 27 variants of single malts alone, Amrut is awaiting their new launch in a couple of months, which is still under wraps.
(An earlier version of this article stated that Nikam's son-in-law was Neelkanta, which has now been corrected.)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
 "Amrut")
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}