Tasting notes

nose

Rich malted barley and caramelized biscuit dipped in coffee, with vanilla oak and a peppery spice

palate

Bittersweet from the first moment, oak and barley locked together, then soft oils, a sharp burst of blood orange and a buttery, delicate turn

finish

Long and slow; oak shifting from vanilla to butter, with dark sugar and cocoa carrying it out

Mash bill

100% malted six-row barley. This is Amrut's unpeated single malt at full strength, made from Indian six-row barley grown in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. The distillery chooses this local strain because it believes it gives a more flavorful spirit, and with no peat in the recipe the barley's character comes through undiluted.

Awards

• Bronze — IWSC 2008
• Gold — International Review of Spirits 2013

Why it's craft

Amrut bottles its core single malt here as it comes out of the cask, with no water added, at 61.8%. The Jagdale family's Bengaluru company, founded in 1948, makes the whisky itself from northern Indian barley and ages it in a climate hot enough that roughly a tenth of each cask evaporates every year, which is why the malt is ready at four or five years old. Amrut took its single malt to Glasgow in 2004, six years before it went on sale in India.