Tasting premium feni at a Goan fazenda is a highly unusual experience

The author thoroughly enjoys a feni tasting at a gorgeous Goan fazenda, and leaves chastened and rather more enlightened

We drive through green countryside and a boulevard of cashew trees en route to Goa’s Fazenda Cazulo. We pass the Three Kings’ Chapel, which overlooks lush paddy fields now sown with beans, since it is summer. On the left is also the home of the aristocrat Tristao de Braganca Cunha, “father of Goan nationalism”. You can feel the sense of history and deep beauty of this place even before you arrive.

And I feel like I’ve arrived at a deeper understanding of feni, a drink that is little known and largely misunderstood. At a time when a young India was