Tasting notes

nose

Smoked barley grist and kippers, with salted butter and a peppery bite

palate

Youthful at first, then a surge of malt and drier oak as the smoke builds

finish

Long; peat that only seeps, cups of unsweetened medium-roast coffee, then soft liquorice and molasses

Mash bill

100% peated malted barley, imported from Scotland. Amrut's peated whiskies use only Scottish peated malt, at roughly 23 to 24 parts per million, in place of the Indian six-row barley in its unpeated flagship. The phenols come with the malt; the distillery's own contribution is the fermentation, distillation and tropical aging.

Why it's craft

This is Amrut's peated malt at full strength, poured from the cask without added water at 62.8%. The barley is malted and peated in Scotland, but the whisky is made and matured at Amrut's distillery outside Bengaluru, where the heat brings it to maturity in four to five years. The company has been run by the Jagdale family since its founding in 1948, and it released India's first bottled single malt in 2004.