Amrut: India's Elixir of Life

The first time I tasted Amrut, I didn’t know what I was tasting. It was 2008, at the American Distillers Whiskey Conference, and whiskey author Jim Murray was conducting a blind tasting of several whiskeys for about 200 distillers. Some of the whiskies I guessed correctly—“Oh, that’s Buffalo Trace. Ah, here’s Sazerac”—but for one of the whiskies, my guess was a little off. 7,269 miles off, to be precise. I swore that potent, heavily peated, heavily delicious whiskey was Ardbeg (Murray’s favorite). Imagine my surprise when he pulled out a bottle of Indian single malt. The whole room was stunned.


I found Amrut again in 2009 at the Chicago Whisky Fest, where importer Raj Sabharwal was pouring the whole range. Raj hooked me up with a preview sample bottle, which I poured at my World Single Malt tasting in June of last year. I had the pleasure of springing my own blind tasting of Amrut on the EQ whisky students. Gotcha!


Amrut took a long time to get to the U.S. after that, leaping a range of bureaucratic hurdles. (At one point the TTB stated that Amrut couldn’t be called a single malt because the term “single malt” was not recognized as applicable outside of Scotch whisky, which is ludicrous. Thankfully the TTB backed off.) It arrived here last month, to the delight of my whisky students. I stock the full range of Amrut—including their newest whisky, Amrut Fusion, named by Murray as the “Third Finest Whisky in the World for 2010”. And all of them in 50 ml mini bottles if you just want a taste.





The Young’uns


What makes Amrut so unique? For starters, while Amrut is brand new in America the distillery was founded in 1948. Clearly, they know how to do a bang-up job on barley malt. The peated Amruts are made from peated barley imported from Scotland, but the two non-peated malts are made from a 200-year-old Indian barley strain, grown at the foot of the Himalaya mountains. The distillery is located in Bangalore, which sits at an elevation of about 3,000 feet. Most peculiar of all is the climate. Temperatures in Bangalore range from an average high of 92ºF in April to 79º in December. Basically, it never cools off much in Bangalore, with the result that the whisky evaporates very quickly in the warehouse and ages much faster than in Scotland or even in Kentucky.





The result is a whisky that tastes remarkably like a 10-12 year old Scotch, but is only four to six years old. Amrut is aged almost entirely in used Bourbon casks, so the rapid maturity is not due to new oak. It simply is bloody hot in Bangalore. This quick aging and outstanding quality at a young age positions Amrut as one of the leaders of a worldwide pack of high quality younger whiskies. Check out the following, all of which are less than five year old:


Steve McCarthy’s peated three-year-old malt from Oregon
Rick Wasmund’s Smoky Virginia Single Malt
St. George Single Malt in Alameda, California


Add to that the blockbuster MacPhail’s Collection 8 Year Old Scotches — winner of Malt Advocate’s Best Buy Award — selling for $29.99 each, and young whiskeys are getting more respect than ever.


Highland Park MacPhails Collection
Tamdhu MacPhails Collection
Bunnahabbain MacPhails Collection