Tasting notes

nose

Stewed plums, dried dates and leather, with dark chocolate, praline and moist fruit cake

palate

Dry and lively; figs, sultanas and fruitcake over firm oak, with liquorice, orange and honeycomb, cherry pipe tobacco and cocoa bean

finish

Long and hot; figs, dates and praline linger with cocoa and tobacco, softened by a thread of caramel

Mash bill

100% malted barley. Amrut has not published which of its barleys goes into this release; its unpeated single malts are made from Indian six-row barley grown in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. What sets the bottle apart is the order of its casks.

Why it's craft

The sherry stage comes in the middle rather than at the end: Amrut moves the spirit from new or ex-bourbon oak into oloroso butts for about a year, then back into bourbon casks. Amrut makes and ages the whisky itself at its distillery outside Bengaluru and releases it in numbered batches. The company, founded in 1948 and still run by the Jagdale family, launched India's first bottled single malt in 2004.