 "Master distiller Michael D’Souza with visitors")
With most vineyards situated in beautiful locales, wine tourism has a natural advantage. In India, too, the country’s wine pioneers, Sula and Grover’s, have set up pretty hostelries, restaurants and spas. While wine may trump whisky for locale — at least in India — whisky beats it hollow in terms of numbers. India is the largest whisky market in the world by volume.
We have millions of cases of lower- and middle-segment whisky, but also at the apex, a few singular expressions of single malt, whisky made in a single distillery and from malted barley. One of these, and possibly the fastest growing, is Paul John, named for its founder, Paul P John. Ten years ago, his company began ageing malts for its single malt programme. The whiskies initially headed only overseas, but once they had a firm foothold there, came homewards.
From a tourism perspective, they took the smart decision to situate their distillery in Goa, even though Goa does not have as equable a climate as Bengaluru, the city where John Distilleries is headquartered. For whisky, maturation is key, and wide temperature variances are not beneficial. The flip side of the high temperatures in Goa is that the whisky matures faster.
A standard feature in most major whisky distilleries overseas is a visitor centre, crucial in bringing a whisky to life. The visitor centre at Paul John is one of the first in India, and its location in Goa means it is well positioned for the scores of tourists who visit the state. Paul John and Michael D’Souza, the master distiller, commissioned Goan architect Dean D’Cruz to base the centre’s design on traditional Goan architecture.
The tasting room
The wide porch of the distillery
Thus, the visitor is greeted with a wide portico and porch, large windows, bright sunny colours and high roofs. “Spacious and airy, the centre was designed on these lines so that visitors could experience not just the whiskies and their making but the ambience and culture of Goa as well,” says Paul P John. You enter into a massive open area with a mother of all fans slowly spinning up high. A trophy wall is adorned with some of the more than 140 global accolades that Paul John’s whiskies have won. The effervescent art of Bianca Menezes lights up the other walls.
Our tour starts with an audio-visual, after which Pankaj Poovanna, manager of the visitor centre, patiently and expertly walks us through the whisky-making process — from the granary, where the barley malt, sourced from the plains of northern India comes, through to the magic of the copper pot stills. The whisky which emerges from these stills is called “new make spirit” and has no colour and little flavour, but its quality is critical to the final product. D’Souza is a strong believer in this quality, and makes every effort towards the same, evident in touches such as the extensive use of copper across the stills and pipes to leach out any last trace of sulphur to the design of the stills themselves.
Quick sip
Paul John Distillery is located in Cuncolim, South Goa, 15 km from Mobor Beach and 45 km from Goa airport
Timings: 11 am–4 pm, Monday to Saturday
Prices: The tour costs Rs 350. Tastings are priced at Rs 300 each per set
Contact: Pankaj at +91-7447788979
The centre brings home the fact that even though India has been making single malt whisky for barely 10-15 years, it is playing catch-up at an amazing rate. The brimming warehouses we go on to are testament to this, filled as they are with ex-bourbon casks from Kentucky, Limousin oak casks from France, sherry butts from Spain and port pipes from Portugal. Thousands of litres of Paul John single malt lie in these warehouses, two overground and one underground, as D’Souza coaxes every last molecule of flavour out of the spirit by constantly varying the combinations and permutations of the alchemy taking place in the casks.
A shelf of whisky
From the cellars, we move to the most fun part of the tour, the tasting. We are introduced first to Nirvana, a new release, which at 40% ABV (alcohol by volume) is the lowest in their range, and priced at an affordable Rs 1,500 in Goa. We then taste the flagships of the range, the Brilliance, Edited and Bold, and then two more whiskies which are only available in Goa due to their high ABV — the Select Cask Classic and Peated (both above 55% ABV).
We’re then poured a shot of a Mystery Dram, the high point of my tasting, a whisky which comes from a combination of casks including an ex-bourbon peated, an ex-bourbon unpeated and an Oloroso sherry butt. There’s just a handful of bottles of this whisky available in Goa and I was quite happy to ante up Rs 4,000 for a bottle. The name? Let’s just say Christmas came a bit late for me — it was the Paul John Christmas Edition 2018 — but worth the wait. And very merry it was too!
The author is co-founder and CEO of Tulleeho, a drinks training and consulting firm
