India
Tropical intensity
The world's biggest whisky-drinking nation is now one of its most exciting makers — single malts aged at tropical speed in Bangalore and on the Goa coast.
Regions
Goa
The coastal upstart
India's smallest state — palm coast, monsoon air, Portuguese-flavoured ease — is where John Distilleries chose to mature its Paul John single malts. The barley is six-row grain grown in the north of India, harder and huskier than Scotland's two-row, and it meets Goa's relentless heat in warehouses where casks give up around 8% a year to the angels. The result: malts that reach deep, spicy, honeyed maturity in four or five years, some kissed with Scottish peat shipped east.
1 distillery
Bangalore
The Deccan pioneer
On the Deccan plateau at 900 metres, Amrut — a family firm distilling since 1948 — did something nobody expected: it launched India's first single malt, in Glasgow of all places, pouring it blind for sceptical Scots in 2004. The altitude tempers the tropics but maturation still runs about three times Scottish speed, and Amrut's trick of marrying Indian barley with imported peated Scottish malt produced Fusion — a bottle that rewrote how the whisky world saw India.
1 distillery