India consumes as much Indian whisky as the rest of the world drinks traditional Gaelic-American whisky, yet more than 99 per cent of Indian whisky cannot be marketed as whisky outside India.
As one of the up-and-coming new malt whisky nations, India’s history with distilled spirits traces back to non-potable Hellenistic apparatuses in the Indus Valley more than 2,000 years ago. Despite its long history with distilling, India’s National Constitution since 1950 seeks to prohibit alcohol consumption except for medicinal purposes. However, the central government permits the states autonomy over liquor manufacture, licensing, and excise, resulting in no uniformity of liquor regulations between the states. Several states have complete prohibitions on the manufacture and sale of alcohol. National imports face 150 per cent tariff despite the central government reducing tariffs from 550 per cent due to pressure from the World Trade Organisation in 2003. President Trump’s recent trade threat lowered bourbon to 100 per cent.
Commercial distilleries appeared soon after the British East India Company gained control of the east coast. Dozens of rum and arrack distilleries were erected from the early 1770s until the British Parliament took over the country’s administration in 1858. A few years later, Edward Dyer moved his 1855 brewery in Solan to nearby Kasauli and began distilling batches of beer into whisky. Several other distilleries produced country whisky. Under the British Raj, whisky replaced brandy as the dominant spirit in the 1880s. E Dyer’s first bottled malt brand, Solan Malt Whisky, was released in the 1930s. With no laws on what constituted whisky in 1898, Scotsman Angus McDowell began blending Scotch with cheap neutral spirit to make the first Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL). Today, IMFL whisky is ubiquitous. His namesake whisky brand, McDowell’s No 1, sold more than 31.4 million cases in 2023.
After Indian Independence in 1947, Dyer’s firm became Mohan Meakin in 1966, one of India’s largest distilling conglomerates. In the 1970s it released Mohanz Regal blended Indian grain and Golden Eagle India malt whisky, joining the Solan brand in domestic distribution. Due to the manufacturing and label opaqueness, all products were blended with imported Scotch malt and local cane spirit, as State Excise Departments classified them as IMFL. IMFL whisky is inexpensive. Goa State prices range from 289.48₹ (£2.49) for a 750ml bottle in 2025, with imported whisky starting at 10 times more. Not surprisingly, in both 2022 and 2024, India has been Scotland’s largest export market in volume — blending 98 per cent of the bulk malt into dozens of local Indian brands. Today, IMFL whisky represents a comparable volume to all the whisky distilled in the UK, Ireland, Canada, the US, and the rest of the world.
Indian malt whisky stepped onto the world stage in the 21st century, garnering praise and sales. In a world first, Indian distilleries released their first modern single malt whisky brands in foreign markets before India. In 2004, Amrut launched its Indian malt whisky brand in Scotland, followed by Paul John in Britain, Australia, and the US in 2012, and Rampur Indian single malt in the US in 2016.
Whisky represents 63 per cent of the spirits consumed in India, growing at 12 per cent annually. With the world’s largest population and middle class doubling to 60 per cent of the population by 2047, liquor marketers have one billion drinkers under 35, adding yearly 20 million legal drinking-age adults.
India’s demographic changes, expectations of tariff reductions, and its predilection for Scotch whisky strongly favour British exports. America’s unfamiliar, sweeter, and oaky bourbon faces a slower road to consumer acceptance. If isolationism becomes the international trade norm, India and China’s whisky El Dorados may not prove the economic saviour for old-world whisky sales. Instead, India’s growing whisky exports will only increase global competition from a nation that endeavours to prohibit liquor. Paradoxes abound.
