The rarefied noses and palates of top tasters have long overlooked India’s efforts to produce a whisky to compete with the world’s best, despite the country’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for a dram.
Now, however, India, the world’s biggest consumer of the spirit, has a whisky that it can be proud of, with a prestigious guide celebrating a drink with notes of chocolate, molasses, dates and delicate spices, all “slightly leavened by passion fruit”. The Paul John Mithuna, distilled on Goa’s Arabian Sea coast, has scored 97 points out of 100 in the latest edition of Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible, putting it among the best three debutants in the world.
In his 2021 guidebook, the author praises its “extraordinary intensity, complexity and beauty” and concludes: