The legend of Old Monk: Sales of Indian rum brand drop, but fans swear by it

Here's a question for you: name an Indian brand of rum. We can bet that nine out of ten answers would be: Old Monk. That's no surprise because this dark rum is indeed part of liquor folklore in India.

Indians do love their rum. A recent UK study has found that we consume the maximum amount of rum in the world or 27% of the 1.47 billion litres of rum consumed globally. These are figures by market research company, International Wine & Spirit Research. Many of us will argue that we don't need a survey to tell us this. After all, over the years, in parties that we attend, or bars that we patronise, there is always someone who wants a rum and coke. And more often than not, that rum is Old Monk.

TIPPLE TALES
Say the word 'Old Monk', and people — students, former air hostesses, businessmen and Army personnel and journalists — will grab your arm and insist on telling you a nostalgic story they associate with a rum and coke they had light years ago. In fact, even the owner of the Old Monk brand has a story to tell.

Rakesh aka Rocky Mohan is the chairman of Mohan Goldwater Breweries Ltd that brews Old Monk rum along with other wines and spirits. He recalls being approached by five young boys two weeks ago at the London airport. “They asked me if I was Rocky Mohan? I was in the middle of security check so I stood stunned. They went on to say, 'We love your rum' and shook my hand,” he says.

The 157-year-old story of Old Monk started in Kasauli, a sleepy town in Himachal Pradesh, where a man named Edward Dyer set up a brewery in 1855.

Little did Dyer know that one day the rum that warmed the bellies of the British aristocracy and army jawans alike would become the common man's drink and would help its owners establish a Rs400-crore empire.

Ask Rocky Mohan how Old Monk attained iconic status, and he's as clueless as anyone else. “We wonder about it too,” he says. “What is important is that it cuts across strata. You will have the manager, the white-collar employee and the peon buying our rum... Though each will pick a different sized bottle.” The 180 ml bottle costs just over Rs120 and is the fastest seller says Rocky, who, ironically, tasted his first cap-full of Old Monk in college and only started drinking socially after he married.

ROMANTICISING RUM
Advertising photographer Ian Pereira's cell phone ringtone is a 1945 hit by The Andrews Sisters called Rum & Coca Cola. Fittingly, Pereira is also the founder of a club of COMRADE (Council of Old Monk Rum Addicted Drinkers & Eccentrics) — rum loyalists who meet once a month to share a drink. And that's not any drink, it's Old Monk rum. “If you drink anything else or don't drink, you aren't invited,” says Pereira, 50, from his Mumbai studio.

At his bar at home, you will find at least three large bottles of Old Monk, one bottle running and two stocked. He has two pegs of rum every night topped with Thums Up. It's a tradition.

Laxmi Lobo is one of the few female members of COMRADE. She likes her rum with water and a slice of lime. Lobo was part of Air India's crew a few years ago and remembers carrying bottles of Old Monk with her during flights to Russia and other cold places. "We had access to a lot of the foreign liquors on the flight but I wanted my Indian rum,” says Lobo, 50, who now runs Spring Blossoms, a flower delivery service across India.

Pereira narrates an incident where he attended a neighbour's son's engagement party and was horrified to find that though alcohol was being served, there wasn't any Old Monk in sight. “I settled down in a corner wondering what to do and then came my solitary bottle of Old Monk that the groom's father brought me,” he recalls. It's not just the oldies. Glenn Satur, a 31-year-old business executive from Bangalore, was so moved by his love for this dark rum that he penned a sonnet in which he compares the drink to the Father of the Nation.

Happily married and now father to a young daughter, Satur says he owes many of his adventures to Old Monk, especially the biggest one: his wedding.

It was his first meeting with his father-in-law to-be and his then Bengali girlfriend, now wife, warned him that her father did not drink, nor approved of alcohol. “He was direct and asked me if I drank. I said 'yes'. Then he asked when I planned to quit and I said 'never'. I didn't even pause to think,” says Satur, who hoped his honesty would pay off.

It clearly did.

“The next day we met the whole family for dinner and he asked me to order my drink and one for him too,” adds Satur smiling. Now, whenever we meet, we share a drink and my wife scolds me for introducing her father to alcohol. The fan base is global. Singapore-based engineer Peter Heppo carries a few bottles back with him whenever he visits India. “I cook with it more than drink it. I use it to marinade lamb and then flambé it on the barbecue. It is very much in demand in Singapore and my English colleagues adore it,” he says.

But the squat bottles seem to be losing steam. In 2002, Old Monk was the largest-selling branded spirits product in India, selling 7.9 million cases, more than double that of McDowell’s No.1 Celebration rum, according to International Wine and Spirit Research data. But in 2012, Old Monk sold only four million cases. McDowell’s sold 17.8 million cases in the same year.

Mohan says he is unwilling to participate in surrogate advertising like other alcohol brands. He would rather focus on making Old Monk available through its network of well-established distributors. “I guess young people don't see it as a classy drink because it is inexpensive but if you step out of the bubble of what marketers describe as the urban-upwardly mobile, you realise that the rest of India is still enjoying their drink as much.”

Must read: Top Old Monk recipes